A growing class of homebuyers holds significant wealth in Bitcoin and other digital assets, but many still struggle to qualify for a traditional mortgage.
That disconnect is creating an opening for lenders like Milo, which says it has now funded more than $100 million in crypto-backed mortgages by underwriting borrowers based in part on their Bitcoin holdings rather than relying solely on W-2 income and conventional documentation.
Josip Rupena
In an interview with Inman, Milo founder and CEO Josip Rupena said the promise of crypto mortgages is not simply that they cater to digital asset enthusiasts. It is that they address a structural problem in the mortgage market: many borrowers may be asset-rich but income-poor on paper, particularly self-employed buyers and investors whose balance sheets do not fit neatly into the traditional underwriting box.
“We’re probably the first company that’s come along and has really challenged the thinking of how we underwrite a consumer for a mortgage,” Rupena told Inman. “We’re going to underwrite you because we know you have assets.”
A mortgage built for crypto-native wealth
Milo launched in 2019 and introduced what it describes as the first crypto mortgage product in 2022. Rupena, whose background includes time at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, said the company was built around a simple observation: Many prospective buyers had accumulated wealth in Bitcoin but did not want to liquidate those holdings to purchase a home, especially if doing so would trigger capital gains taxes.
That idea helped generate significant early interest. According to Rupena, Milo had more than 10,000 people on its waitlist when the product launched and has continued to build momentum despite a tougher lending environment following the surge in mortgage rates in 2022.
At the core of Milo’s product is a dual-collateral approach. The mortgage is secured not only by the home itself, but also by Bitcoin held with a third-party custodian such as Coinbase. If a borrower misses payments, Milo has recourse to sell a portion of the Bitcoin to keep the loan current.
Rupena argues that this structure better reflects how some modern borrowers actually build wealth. Traditional mortgage underwriting, he said, remains heavily tied to income verification and down payment requirements, while largely ignoring other meaningful assets that borrowers may hold.
“There’s all of these pockets of inefficiencies out there in mortgage land,” he said. “A lot of people have a wide variety of assets, whether it’s stocks, Bitcoin, other assets, none of that really gets factored into the decision.”
Crypto mortgages collide with legacy lending rules
For all the buzz surrounding crypto-backed mortgages, the regulatory environment remains fragmented.
Rupena said one of the biggest barriers to growth is that mortgage lenders must navigate overlapping rules at the federal, state and agency levels, while also dealing with inconsistencies in how different states treat crypto-related products.
Mortgage regulations such as RESPA, TILA and ability-to-repay standards still shape what lenders can build, while additional state-level rules and licensing requirements create an uneven playing field across markets.
“I think the regulatory landscape limits innovation,” Rupena said. “You may have a consumer that can access a product that we offer in a certain state, but then not in another state.”
That tension has become more visible as government-backed mortgage players begin inching toward crypto-adjacent products. But Rupena said recent headlines about Fannie Mae embracing crypto mortgages have overstated what has actually changed.
According to him, the current structure being discussed still relies on a conventional mortgage for roughly 70 to 80 percent of the home’s value, paired with a separate crypto-backed loan for the down payment. In other words, the borrower must still qualify for the primary mortgage under traditional underwriting standards.
“The announcement a couple of weeks ago about Fannie accepting crypto mortgages is a little misleading because they haven’t changed their underwriting guidelines, at least not yet, to consider Bitcoin in the underwriting,” Rupena said.
That distinction matters because it gets to the heart of the debate around where crypto-backed lending goes from here.
For lenders like Milo, the bigger opportunity is not simply using Bitcoin to bridge a down payment. It is about rethinking the underwriting process itself to account for borrowers whose wealth is held in digital or nontraditional assets.
Agents face a new kind of buyer
Rupena expects that idea to gain traction over the next three to five years, especially as more Americans build wealth outside the classic W-2 model. In his view, crypto-backed mortgages are likely to become more mainstream first as a tax-efficient product for borrowers who do not want to sell appreciated assets. But the broader concept could eventually extend to stocks, IRAs and 401(k)-linked underwriting models as well.
For real estate agents, that shift could create both opportunity and risk.
Rupena said agents working with crypto-rich buyers need to understand that these deals require specialized knowledge around custody, underwriting and transaction timelines. A lender unfamiliar with digital assets can slow down approvals and jeopardize a closing, he said, especially in fast-moving transactions.
“It’s such a large transaction, it’s so important that this isn’t going to be something that they’re just going to be able to refer to their friend that has been doing mortgages for a long time,” Rupena said. “Unless they have specifically gotten up to speed with what the opportunities are.”
There are also still deeper perception hurdles. Many consumers and industry professionals continue to view Bitcoin as inherently too risky to support a mortgage product. Rupena said that view is often driven more by volatility than by a sober assessment of Bitcoin’s long-term staying power.
Whether regulators ultimately move faster remains an open question. But one thing is becoming clearer: as digital assets become a larger part of household wealth, pressure will grow on the mortgage industry to decide whether conventional underwriting is still enough.
For now, crypto-backed mortgages remain a niche product. But lenders like Milo betting on the category believe they are early, not fringe.
English (US) · 