$4 Trillion Dollar Mortgage Giant Let's You Use Bitcoin as Collateral

Last Thursday, Better Home & Finance and Coinbase announced the first-ever Fannie Mae-conforming mortgage backed by Bitcoin.

Now you may have heard of other Bitcoin backed loans, in fact I’ve written about LEDN before but there’s a bit of a difference here.

So yes, we start off with you have Bitcoin, you don’t want to sell it but now you can pledge it as collateral for a down payment on a home and keep the Bitcoin as well.

This is great for Bitcoin holder’s who have amassed a good amount of wealth in Bitcoin but had some trouble using it to get a home that met Fannie Mae standards.

So there’s no capital gains hit PLUS you don’t lose your Bitcoin position.

You get the house and the Bitcoin.

Plus get this… the structure has no margin calls.

If Bitcoin drops 40%, your mortgage terms don’t change. The only liquidation trigger is 60 days of missed payments which is pretty much the same as any other mortgage out there.

Coinbase’s Max Branzburg, head of consumer and business products, put it this way: “We are giving people access to housing in a way that is very similar to how private bankers serve some of the wealthiest customers. They don’t sell assets to buy stuff; they actually take loans against assets.”

Ever heard the sentence “the rich get richer”?

Yeah, this is how they do it but simply borrowing against one asset, to get another asset but keep ownership and upside of both.

This is what we can do now with Bitcoin as well.

Better CEO Vishal Garg added: “We have now finally created the infrastructure rails to enable any tokenized asset in America to be pledged to help someone afford to buy a home.”

Fannie Mae is a $4 trillion government-sponsored enterprise and it sets the standard for what qualifies as a conforming mortgage in America. So having Fannie Mae says Bitcoin is acceptable collateral that means that Bitcoin as an asset class has been accepted by one of the most conservative governmental organizations.

So are we in a bear market… I mean, yeah. Obviously.

But I still believe in the Million Dollar Bitcoin because of infrastructure like this being built into the economic system.

Because as Matt Hougan says “95% of the world’s largest investors have zero exposure to Bitcoin.”

And right now over 95% of all the Bitcoin that will ever be mined is already out there and with products like this where people will no longer be forced to sell, they’ll only hold on longer and drive the price up more over time.

BNP Paribas officially began offering six Bitcoin and Ethereum-linked ETNs (Exchange Traded Note) to retail clients in France.

Now if you’re like me and have never heard of this bank before, here’s the rundown.

They operate in 64 countries, have 178,000 employees and manages €2.8 trillion in assets and now they’re a Bitcoin distribution channel.

The bank was careful to note it isn’t recommending crypto as an asset class but instead is “responding to client demand.”

Which is the Vanguard, BNP’s and JP Morgan’s of the world doing this because of crypto’s popularity.

If it was up to these guys they’d never add Bitcoin to their platforms to begin with, no matter how trendy it is but chances are they’re doing it because clients are walking out the door toward platforms that already offer it.

The ETNs, which are products that track the price of an index or an asset but does not actually hold the asset (sorry HODL’ers) will be issued by BlackRock’s iShares, Invesco, WisdomTree, and VanEck... are accessible through standard securities accounts under MiFID II rules.

No crypto wallet. No custody headaches.

For how much we want to believe Bitcoin is true freedom money there will always be a large contingent of people who will want to own it but not deal with the actual hassle of dealing with it.

Whether that’s good or bad, I can’t really say.

Basically if you have an account at BNP you’d buy Bitcoin exposure the same way you’d buy a French government bond, it’s safe to say that Bitcoin is even less of a “fringe” narrative asset.

Because if today’s news doesn’t show you the $1M thesis playing out in real time... I don’t know what will.

I wrote this book for one reason: to give you the complete case... the data, the stories, the math... behind why Bitcoin is heading to seven figures. Not hopium. Not hype. Just facts.

The book is live on Amazon. Order now and start reading today.

👉 Order “The Million Dollar Bitcoin” on Amazon

What you get:

This isn’t about convincing you to buy Bitcoin. It’s about giving you the information to make your own informed decision.

Order on Amazon →

I know, that headline reads a bit weird but stick with me here.

MARA Holdings which is the world’s largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner sold 15,133 Bitcoin between March 4 and March 25 and ended up with $1.1 billion in their hands.

Bears are calling it capitulation, saying that miners are done for and Bitcoin is failing as a treasury asset.

They’re missing the point entirely.

MARA didn’t sell because Bitcoin failed. They sold because Bitcoin worked.

That $1.1 billion went straight into repurchasing $1 billion of their own convertible notes... at a 9% discount to par value.

So with the help of Bitcoin the company captured $88 million in savings, slashed their total convertible debt from $3.3 billion to $2.3 billion, and did it without issuing a single new share.

Chairman Fred Thiel called it a “strategic capital allocation move” to “strengthen our balance sheet and position the company for long-term growth.”

They still hold 15,627 BTC.

We should take a moment to see the broader context here.

Mining economics have tightened hard.

MARA’s energy cost per Bitcoin mined hit $48,611 in Q4... up from $31,608 the year before.

With AI opportunities coming online the industry is pivoting and MARA as a company is now building out AI and high-performance computing infrastructure that they can sell compute too.

Meanwhile, Strategy continues to accumulate Bitcoin without selling.

What does the divergence tell us?

Different companies with different capital structures will use Bitcoin differently.

Some hold it as an ideological conviction and some use it as a liquid financial instrument to restructure billion-dollar balance sheets.

Both behaviors are legitimate. And both say the same thing about Bitcoin is that it’s liquid, valuable and trustworthy.

It’s liquid enough. Valuable enough. Trusted enough.

What distressed company uses an asset “going to zero” to wipe out $1 billion in liabilities and walk away with $88 million in savings? You don’t do that with tulip bulbs. You do it with hard money.

Stay patient. Stay stacked.

Anthony

P.S. If you haven’t ordered “The Million Dollar Bitcoin” yet, do it now. This newsletter gives you headlines. The book gives you the complete thesis. Available on Amazon right now. Start reading today when it can still change your tomorrow, not “someday.”