Better and Coinbase Take the Token-Backed Mortgage to All 50 States

A mortgage secured partly by pledged crypto is now on general sale in the United States. Better Home and Finance and Coinbase said their token-backed conforming loan had left the waitlist phase and reached general availability across all 50 states and the United Kingdom. The product pairs a standard Fannie Mae conforming mortgage on the house with a second loan, secured by digital assets the borrower pledges instead of selling, that funds the down payment. The announcement is dated 26 August. The general-availability date inside it is 12 August, two weeks earlier, and HousingWire's account gives the same 12 August date.

The collateral question has three answers

What a borrower may pledge is not settled by the published material. Better's March launch release names bitcoin and USDC, with tokenized equities, fixed income and real estate listed as later additions. Coinbase's own product page names bitcoin and nothing else. Wednesday's release says "crypto" and "digital assets" without naming an asset anywhere. Those three accounts do not reconcile, and no primary listing located settles which assets are eligible today.

How the pledge is structured

Coinbase's product page carries the mechanics, and it is the only place they appear. Two loans close at once, at the same rate and on the same amortisation schedule, fixed for 15 or 30 years. Pledged collateral sits in Better's Coinbase Prime account for the life of the loan and returns to the borrower on repayment. The minimum pledge is 250% of the down-payment loan: $250,000 of bitcoin supports $100,000 of borrowed down payment. That page also describes the loan terms as unaffected by the pledged asset's price moves, and Better's March release said there are no margin calls when values fall, with liquidation following only a 60-day payment delinquency. Neither term is restated in Wednesday's release. Each rests on one document.

What the waitlist showed

The demand figures all come from one place. Before general availability the waitlist carried more than $260 million in projected loan volume, 76% of respondents were already Coinbase One subscribers, and 60% said they intended to buy within six months. Those numbers appear in the release, in HousingWire's story and in stocktitan's summary, which is a single source in three renderings and not three independent counts. Approved Coinbase One members get a closing-cost credit worth 1% of the mortgage, capped at $10,000 and paid by the lender. It applies to ordinary mortgages, home equity lines and refinances as well.

Whether the pipeline follows

The pitch Better makes is generational, and its executives said so plainly. Ziggy Jonsson, the company's chief technology officer, put the case in one line.

"In 2025, high interest rates, record home prices, and limited inventory pushed the median age of a first-time homebuyer to 40," Jonsson said.

Ben Shen, who heads financial services at Coinbase, said the point is making pledged digital assets useful in mortgage underwriting. HousingWire renders that quote with two extra words the release does not carry, a small gap between the two texts. Coinbase has spent the year widening its non-trading business, taking an FCA licence covering UK equities and perpetuals and adding lending partnerships, while rivals worked on collateral of their own — Kraken began accepting tokenized stocks as margin this year. What Wednesday's announcement does not give is a funded-loan count. Until Better reports one, the $260 million is a projection off a sign-up form.