Trump Cryptocurrency Innovation Could Bring Homeownership to Millions

With sky-high interest rates and rising building costs, the American dream of home ownership is slipping further away for millions of Americans. However, an innovative new policy from the Trump administration could bring that dream back to reality for many, especially young people. 

Last month, Bill Pulte, director of the Trump Federal Housing Finance Agency, ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare their businesses to count cryptocurrency as an asset for a would-be homeowner seeking to apply for a single-family mortgage loan.

This new policy, which fits into the Trump administration’s broader embrace of technology and innovation, would provide a hedge against currency instability and allow applicants to receive lower mortgage interest rates, while also nudging Americans to diversify their asset classes.

It especially could help aspiring young homeowners, who are far more likely to own cryptocurrency assets than older Americans, but also less likely to achieve the dream of homeownership. In April, the National Association of Home Builders reported the homeownership rate for those under 35 declined slightly to 36.6% in the first quarter of 2025 (compared to a year ago) and is still hovering at the lowest rate in six years.

The new Trump risk assessments proposal would only cover those cryptocurrencies held on U.S.-regulated, centralized exchanges and only as assets in single-family mortgage loan applications. 

U.S.-regulated cryptocurrency exchanges are required to comply with various federal and state regulations, including those related to licensing, “Know Your Customer” procedures (e.g. where firms prevent fraud by ensuring they verify client identity), and anti-money laundering practices. Some prominent U.S.-regulated centralized cryptocurrency exchanges include Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Binance.US, and Robinhood (disclosure: I own cryptocurrency shares through Robinhood, and I heavily favor President Donald Trump’s proposal). 

The Trump administration order does not require converting crypto into U.S. dollars and does not include crypto held in self-custodied wallets (e.g. unregulated digital wallets). It also calls for risk management like accounting for crypto market volatility and caps on how much crypto counts toward financial reserves. The cap would help ensure financial solvency or security through more traditional assets. 

Nicholas Grous with ARK Invest estimates that if just 5% of mortgage borrowers included crypto-based assets in their applications, roughly 305,000 would qualify for a mortgage under this new Trump administration criteria. This would help support $100 billion in mortgage originations, ARK Invest projects, with each additional percentage point of adoption increasing mortgage loan volume by about $20 billion. 

Should the Trump administration finalize this rule, it would set a precedent for wider adoption across mortgages and crypto-assets. Grous is spot on that the potential financial scope of impact for this change is huge, and he notes that a 2025 Harris Poll commissioned by CryptoSlate found 21% of U.S. adults own digital assets. Of the nearly 55 million individuals who own crypto-assets, the survey reported 6 million hold more than $100,000 on average.

The iEmergent’s 2024 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data showed there were 6.09 million loans totaling $1.82 trillion mortgages last year, which amounts to an average loan size of about $340,000.

America’s overall homeownership rate declined to 65.1% in the first quarter of 2025—the lowest level since the first quarter of 2020, the National Association of Home Builders also reported.

Dragged down by high mortgage interest rates and limited housing supply, housing affordability has sadly hit a multi-decade low. U.S. homeownership hit a peak of 69.2% in 2004—4.1 percentage points higher than today. Today’s homeownership rate remains below the 25-year average rate of 66.3%.

This exciting development under President Donald Trump’s leadership helps build a new pipeline between blockchain-based capital and the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market.

While new technologies always come with risk, mitigating them properly is the key to continuing America’s leadership in innovation and prosperity. It’s time the housing market entered the 21st Century.

Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst for the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women’s Forum. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. 

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