The U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop plans for treating verified cryptocurrency holdings as eligible assets when they assess risk on single-family mortgage loans. The directive, signed by FHFA Director William J. Pulte on 25 June, is the first federal move to weave digital assets into the country’s mainstream housing-finance system. Under the order, the government-sponsored enterprises must examine how borrowers’ crypto reserves can be counted without requiring conversion into U.S. dollars, provided the assets are stored on U.S-regulated centralized exchanges. The companies are also told to craft risk-based adjustments that account for crypto’s price volatility and to set limits on the share of reserves composed of digital coins. Pulte said the step advances President Donald Trump’s goal of making the United States “the crypto capital of the world” and could widen access to homeownership by recognizing a broader range of household assets. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently guarantee more than half of outstanding U.S. residential mortgages. Each enterprise must submit its proposal to its board and then to the FHFA for review; the regulator has not yet provided a timeline for when any new underwriting rules might take effect.