FHFA ordered Fannie and Freddie to draft crypto mortgage-reserve plans

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte signed Decision No. 2025-360 on June 25, 2025, directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare proposals for considering cryptocurrency as an asset for reserves in single-family mortgage risk assessments without first converting it into U.S. dollars.

The order mattered because the two government-sponsored enterprises shape underwriting practices across the American mortgage market. It brought digital assets into a federal housing-finance process that had generally required cryptocurrency-derived funds to be converted into dollars before they could support a qualifying mortgage application.

The development was narrower than claims that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had begun accepting cryptocurrency as payment or collateral. On June 25, the enterprises had been ordered to design proposals. Borrowers did not receive an immediate right to qualify for a mortgage using any token they owned.

What the order required

The directive limited the contemplated treatment to cryptocurrency that could be evidenced and stored on a U.S.-regulated centralized exchange operating under applicable law. That condition placed verifiability and regulated custody at the center of the proposal process and left self-custodied holdings outside the order’s stated eligibility framework.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also told to consider safeguards for market volatility, including risk-based adjustments to the portion of a borrower’s reserves represented by cryptocurrency. The order did not prescribe a valuation formula, a mandatory discount or haircut, or a maximum crypto share. Those details were left for the enterprises to assess.

Each enterprise had to obtain approval from its board of directors before submitting its proposal to FHFA for review. Although Decision No. 2025-360 said the order was effective immediately and should be implemented as soon as reasonably practical, that language activated the planning and approval process; it did not make unconverted cryptocurrency an immediately available mortgage reserve under a completed underwriting standard.

Reserves were not the same as collateral

Mortgage reserves are assets available to help a borrower continue meeting obligations after closing. The June 25 directive concerned whether cryptocurrency could count in that assessment. It did not say that a lender must take a security interest in tokens, accept mortgage payments in cryptocurrency, finance a down payment directly with tokens, or absorb losses if their value declined.

Contemporaneous Associated Press reporting said banks seeking to originate mortgages eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac had not typically counted cryptocurrency holdings until the assets were sold and converted into dollars. The planned approach could therefore remove a liquidation step for some applicants, but only if the enterprises and FHFA ultimately approved workable rules.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages from lenders and guarantee qualifying loans, providing liquidity to the secondary mortgage market. Changes to their standards can influence originating lenders even though the enterprises generally do not make home loans directly to consumers. That institutional reach made the order more consequential than a private lender announcing a specialized crypto-backed product.

The unresolved risk questions

Decision No. 2025-360 did not identify eligible cryptocurrencies, name qualifying exchanges, establish how ownership would be verified, or explain how frequently holdings would be revalued. It also did not resolve the operational tension created by restricting consideration to centralized exchanges when many cryptocurrency owners use self-custody.

Volatility remained the central underwriting problem. A reserve asset can lose value between application, approval and closing, while different tokens carry substantially different liquidity, custody and market-integrity risks. The order acknowledged that problem by requiring risk mitigants, but supplied no completed methodology on June 25.

Pulte presented the directive as part of an effort to recognize wealth held outside traditional stocks and bonds. That was the administration’s stated policy rationale, not evidence that the change would expand homeownership, reduce defaults or improve loan performance.

No causal claim about cryptocurrency prices can be supported from the reviewed records. The verifiable June 25 development was institutional: a federal conservator ordered two systemically important mortgage enterprises to formulate a controlled pathway for considering certain unconverted cryptocurrency holdings, subject to board approval and further FHFA review.