A bitcoin mortgage lets you buy a home using bitcoin you already own, without selling it. You keep your stack and its future upside, you generally avoid the tax bill that selling would trigger, and you still end up with a house. That is the appeal in one sentence.
The problem is that "bitcoin mortgage" is used for three completely different products that behave nothing alike, especially when bitcoin's price drops. Most of the coverage you will find blurs them together, which is why the topic feels more confusing than it is. This guide separates the three cleanly, explains exactly how each one treats a price crash, lays out the real costs, and helps you work out which, if any, fits your situation. We are a comparison publisher, not a lender, broker, or advisor, so nothing here is a pitch for one provider over another.
The three kinds of bitcoin mortgage
Almost every question about bitcoin mortgages resolves the moment you know which of these three you are talking about.
- A conforming mortgage with a bitcoin-backed down payment. You get a normal Fannie Mae mortgage on the home, plus a second loan, secured by pledged bitcoin, that funds your cash down payment. This is the Better and Coinbase product, and it is the first version backed by a government-sponsored enterprise.
- A crypto-collateralized mortgage. Your bitcoin secures the loan itself, often with little or no down payment. These are typically non-QM loans from specialist lenders such as Milo, underwritten against your assets rather than a traditional paycheck.
- Qualifying for an ordinary mortgage by counting bitcoin as a reserve. You do not pledge anything. Your bitcoin simply counts as an asset that helps you qualify for a standard loan. This is the direction US housing-finance regulators pointed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2025.
BTC-backed down payment
A normal Fannie Mae mortgage, plus a second loan, secured by pledged bitcoin, that funds your cash down payment.
Crypto-collateralized mortgage
Your bitcoin secures the loan itself, often with little or no down payment, underwritten on assets rather than a paycheck.
Qualify with crypto
Your bitcoin is counted as a reserve asset to help you qualify, with a haircut, and is never pledged or locked up.
The single most important difference between them is what happens if bitcoin falls while the loan is open. In one, the price is irrelevant to the loan. In another, a big enough drop can force you to post more collateral. In the third, the price only mattered on the day you applied. Get that distinction right and you will understand bitcoin mortgages better than most of what is written about them. The rest of this guide takes each in turn.
Type 1: A conforming mortgage with a bitcoin-backed down payment
This is the structure that made headlines in 2026, when Better, working with Coinbase, funded the first mortgage backed by Fannie Mae in which bitcoin secured the borrower's down payment. It is worth understanding in detail because it is the most mainstream version and the most widely misreported.
How the two-loan structure works
You actually take out two loans that close together and are managed as one:
- A conforming mortgage on the home. A standard Fannie Mae loan, underwritten the normal way, with normal rates and a normal lien on the property.
- A separate down-payment loan secured by your bitcoin. Instead of wiring cash for the down payment, you pledge bitcoin as collateral for a second loan that supplies it. That loan is secured by your pledged crypto and a second lien on the home.
According to Better's published terms, you pledge bitcoin worth at least 250 percent of the down-payment loan. So a $100,000 down payment requires roughly $250,000 of bitcoin posted as collateral. USD Coin, if you use it instead, is accepted at a lower ratio, around 125 percent. The crypto is held in the lender's custodial account on Coinbase for the life of the down-payment loan and released back to you when you repay or refinance.
The part most articles get wrong: there is no margin call
Here is the feature that separates this product from a bitcoin loan, and the one most coverage misses. Better states plainly that bitcoin's price volatility has no effect on your mortgage or your down-payment loan, and that there is no top-up requirement. If bitcoin falls 40 percent next month, nothing about your loan changes. There is no margin call driven by price.
That is a genuine design difference, and the over-collateralization is the reason for it. By requiring 250 percent coverage up front, the lender builds in so much cushion that ordinary volatility never threatens the position, so it does not need to chase you for more collateral the way an LTV-based bitcoin loan does. This is why the product is sometimes described as a no-margin-call mortgage.
The risk to your bitcoin does not vanish, though. It moves from the price to your payments. Per Better's terms, if you become 60 or more days delinquent on the loan, the lender may liquidate your pledged crypto, and foreclosure proceedings follow Fannie Mae's standard timeline at around 180 days of delinquency. So the thing that endangers your bitcoin here is missing payments, not a market crash. That is a very different risk profile from a margin-callable loan, and you should understand which one you are signing up for.
Costs and eligibility
Because the home loan is conforming, it follows ordinary Fannie Mae underwriting, including credit and income verification. The down-payment loan carries its own interest cost on top. Reporting around the launch put the rate premium in the range of roughly 125 to 150 basis points above a comparable conventional rate, though you should treat any specific number as a moving target and confirm it directly. Coinbase One members have been offered a lender credit of 1 percent of each loan amount, up to $10,000, at closing, and USD Coin used as collateral can earn rewards while it is pledged. The program is offered on Fannie Mae eligible property types.
Type 2: A crypto-collateralized mortgage
The second kind predates the Fannie Mae news and works differently. Here your bitcoin secures the mortgage itself, and these loans are usually non-QM, meaning they sit outside the qualified-mortgage rules and are underwritten on assets rather than a traditional income history. Milo is the best-known example, and Moon Mortgage operates in the same space.
What makes it distinct
- Little or no down payment. Some of these products advertise up to 100 percent financing. Instead of a cash down payment, your pledged crypto plus the property itself secure the loan.
- No traditional income documentation. Qualification leans on net worth and assets, which is why the product appeals to founders, early holders, and people whose wealth is not a steady salary.
- A collateral threshold, which means it can margin call. This is the crucial contrast with Type 1. These loans generally maintain a collateral-to-loan relationship, and a large enough drawdown can prompt a request for more collateral. Milo has described a structure where the trigger sits around a 65 percent decline before more collateral is needed, and has said that over a multiyear track record and more than $100 million in originations it has not yet had to make such a call. Still, the mechanism exists, so a deep, sustained crash is a real consideration in a way it is not for the conforming product.
Custody matters here too
Because your bitcoin secures the loan for years, ask exactly where it sits and on what terms. Some lenders hold it themselves, some use a qualified custodian, and some support arrangements where you retain more control. The same question that mattered for the 2022 lender failures applies: whether the collateral can be reused. We cover that risk in depth in the bitcoin loans guide, and the logic carries straight over to mortgages.
Type 3: Qualifying for a mortgage by counting bitcoin as a reserve
The third version is the most often misunderstood, because nothing gets pledged at all. Your bitcoin is not collateral. It simply counts as a reserve asset that helps you qualify for an ordinary mortgage, the same way a brokerage account would.
A version of this already exists outside the government-backed system. Some non-QM lenders and brokers count your holdings through asset depletion, or as reserves, after applying a conservative discount, often around 50 percent, to their value. LendFriend, Newrez, and Rate are among the lenders our data flags as using this model. Your bitcoin stays in your control, and you still bring a cash down payment; the crypto only helps you qualify.
What changed in 2025 is that this idea started moving into the mainstream. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, under Director Bill Pulte, directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop plans to treat cryptocurrency held on US-regulated exchanges as an asset in single-family mortgage risk assessment, without first converting it to dollars, and with risk adjustments for volatility. As of 2026 the enterprises are still operationalizing exactly how that works, so treat the conforming version as a direction of travel rather than a finished, uniformly available product, and confirm what any given lender actually accepts today.
The trade-offs here are almost the mirror image of the other two. You keep full control of your bitcoin, with no lien and no custody handover, and there is no margin call because nothing is pledged. But you also get none of the down-payment help, you still need the cash to close, and how much your holdings count toward qualifying is subject to volatility haircuts that can be steep.
What actually happens if bitcoin's price falls
Since this is the question that decides whether a bitcoin mortgage is safe or dangerous for you, here is the side-by-side that the three-way split makes possible.
| If bitcoin drops sharply | Type 1: Conforming, BTC down payment | Type 2: Crypto-collateralized | Type 3: Qualify with crypto |
|---|---|---|---|
| Effect on the loan | None; no top-up required | Can trigger a request for more collateral | None; price only mattered at application |
| What endangers your bitcoin | Missing payments, not price | A deep, sustained price crash | Nothing is pledged |
| Down payment needed | Yes, funded by the pledged crypto | Often little or none | Yes, in cash |
| Income documentation | Standard Fannie Mae underwriting | Often none; assets-based | Standard underwriting |
The worst case worth naming plainly applies most to Type 2 and to any margin-callable structure: in a severe crash you can face a collateral call you cannot meet and, in the extreme, lose both the home and the bitcoin to a forced liquidation. Critics of the category have made exactly this point, noting that funding a home this way adds leverage on top of a volatile asset and is appropriate only for a narrow band of borrowers who can absorb that. It is a fair criticism, and it is the reason the price-insensitive design of the conforming product is such an important distinction rather than a marketing detail.
The tax angle: why people do this at all
Strip away the mechanics and the entire case for a bitcoin mortgage is tax timing. Under current US treatment, selling bitcoin to fund a home realizes a capital gain and the tax that comes with it. Pledging bitcoin as collateral is generally not a sale, so it usually does not trigger that gain, and you keep your exposure to future price moves. For a long-term holder sitting on a large unrealized gain, the tax saved by not selling can dwarf the interest cost of the loan, which is the whole reason these products exist.
Two honest caveats. First, a forced liquidation of pledged collateral is a sale, so the very event you are trying to avoid can arrive anyway if things go wrong, and it can land you a tax bill on top of the loss. Second, tax treatment depends on your circumstances and on rules that can change. We walk through the current rules, and the places the line can blur, in Is borrowing against bitcoin a taxable event?, and our sell versus borrow tools let you put real numbers to the comparison. None of it is a substitute for a CPA.
What a bitcoin mortgage really costs
Look past the headline rate, because there are three costs and only one of them is obvious.
- The rate premium. Expect to pay more than a comparable conventional or non-QM loan. For the conforming structure the down-payment loan added roughly 125 to 150 basis points in early reporting; non-QM crypto mortgages have been described as modestly above conventional. Confirm the live number, since it moves.
- The cost of over-collateralization. This is the one almost no one prices. Locking up 250 percent coverage means a large amount of bitcoin sits pledged and unusable for the life of the loan. That is bitcoin you cannot deploy, borrow further against, or move, and that opportunity cost is real even though no one invoices you for it.
- Ordinary mortgage costs. Closing costs, origination, and the rest still apply, offset in some cases by promotional lender credits.
The right way to weigh all of this is against the alternative you are avoiding, which is the tax and lost upside of simply selling bitcoin for a cash down payment. That comparison, not the rate in isolation, is what tells you whether the structure earns its cost. Our calculators make it concrete with your own figures.
How the main providers compare
The three-type grid near the top of this guide lists the lenders active in each model, with a link to our full review of each. Terms reflect each provider's publicly described approach as of 2026 and will change, so confirm current details on the live lender reviews before acting. We do not rank mortgage products, because the right one depends entirely on your situation; this is a map, not a leaderboard.
For a side-by-side filtered to your numbers, including the conventional mortgage lenders that now accept crypto reserves, use the comparison tool and read the individual reviews. Our full approach is on the methodology page.
Who a bitcoin mortgage suits, and who it does not
It tends to make sense when:
- You hold a meaningful unrealized gain and selling for a down payment would trigger a heavy tax bill.
- You are a long-term holder who wants to keep bitcoin's upside while still buying a home.
- You can comfortably service a normal mortgage payment, since on the conforming product that, not price, is what protects your collateral.
- You understand exactly which of the three structures you are using and how it behaves in a crash.
It tends not to make sense when:
- The mortgage only works if bitcoin's price holds up, and a margin-callable structure would put your home at the mercy of the market.
- You would be stretching to afford the payments, so a delinquency could cost you the bitcoin as well as the house.
- You need maximum flexibility with your bitcoin, which a multiyear 250 percent pledge removes.
- You are not clear on the custody arrangement or on what the lender can do with your collateral.
How to get a bitcoin mortgage, step by step
- Decide which of the three structures you actually want. Down-payment financing, a fully crypto-collateralized loan, or simply qualifying with crypto as a reserve. This choice drives everything else.
- Pin down the crash behavior. Ask directly whether the product can margin call on price, what the collateral ratio is, and what triggers a liquidation. Get it in writing.
- Confirm eligibility and availability. Property type, your state, and whether you meet the underwriting, which differs sharply between conforming and non-QM.
- Read the custody and liquidation terms. Who holds the bitcoin, whether it can be reused, and the exact delinquency timeline before it is at risk.
- Compare the full cost against selling. Weigh the rate premium and the locked collateral against the tax and lost upside of a cash down payment, using the calculators and reviews.
This is not financial advice
borrow/on/bitcoin is a comparison publisher, not a lender, broker, or financial or tax advisor. Bitcoin mortgages involve real risk, including the loss of pledged collateral and, in some structures, of your home, and both their terms and the tax and regulatory rules around them can change. Product details described here reflect public information as of 2026 and may already have shifted. Compare current terms on our tool and reviews, and confirm anything here with a qualified professional before acting on it.