New housing directive could quietly change who qualifies for loans originally appeared on TheStreet .
President Donald Trump has vowed to turn the U.S. into the "crypto capital of the world." He has pursued an aggressive pro-crypto policy during his second term, such as signing executive orders to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve and pursuing crypto regulatory bills.
Now, the Trump administration has taken another step in the direction of crypto adoption.
On June 25, William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), issued an order that directs the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FMCC) — popularly called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — to consider cryptocurrency as an asset as part of mortgage requests.
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-backed enterprises that purchase mortgages on the secondary market, issue them as mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), and guarantee payments to investors. While the enterprises don't issue mortgages, they issue guidelines around them.
Pulte's directive asks these enterprises to formulate proposals to consider crypto assets for reserves in single-family mortgage loan risk assessments. Unlike earlier, the newly proposed process doesn't require the conversion of virtual assets into U.S. dollar as the loan closes.
The latest move by the federal housing regulator is reflective of the broader shift toward institutional recognition of crypto as legitimate assets in the U.S.
Nonetheless, the order is careful enough to caution Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac against considering cryptocurrencies not stored on U.S.-regulated, centralized trading exchanges.
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Michael Saylor , the billionaire entrepreneur who leads the world's largest public Bitcoin treasury company MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) , congratulated Pulte on the move.
One X user, however, was disappointed with the FHFA's decision to prefer assets held on centralized crypto exchanges over those held in self-custody.
New housing directive could quietly change who qualifies for loans first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 26, 2025
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
