Legislation to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider digital assets when assessing single-family mortgage eligibility seeks to codify a directive issued by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) framed the 21st Century Mortgage Act as a means of bringing America’s mortgage system into the digital age in a way that would also make homeownership more accessible.
“The American dream of homeownership is not a reality for many young people,” Lummis said in a press release. “This legislation embraces an innovative path to wealth-building, keeping in mind the growing number of young Americans who possess digital assets. We’re living in a digital age, and rather than punishing innovation, government agencies must evolve to meet the needs of a modern, forward-thinking generation.”
The bill references a directive issued by Pulte on June 25 for the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to evaluate the risks associated with allowing loan borrowers to use cryptocurrencies in real estate transactions without first requiring them to be converted to U.S. dollars.
“After significant studying, and in keeping with President Trump’s vision to make the United States the crypto capital of the world, today I ordered the Great Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare their businesses to count cryptocurrency as an asset for a mortgage,” Pulte wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
If adopted, the legislation would stipulate that Fannie Mae and the Freddie Mac must include digital assets recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger as part of their mortgage risk assessments for single-family home loans. The bill also would prohibit forcing the conversion of these assets into dollars.
Lummis positioned the bill as a way of addressing the “unprecedented homeownership crisis” facing young Americans, citing U.S. Census Bureau data indicating that only 36.6 percent of Americans under the age of 35 owned a home during the first quarter of 2025. Her press release also noted homeownership among younger Americans has reached “historically low levels since the Housing Vacancy Survey began tracking homeownership by age in 1982.”
At the same time, the same age demographic represents one of the largest population segments to own cryptocurrency as their primary wealth-building strategy, despite concerns about its high volatility and other risk concerns, according to the 2025 State of the Crypto Holders Report. Twenty-one percent of U.S. adults currently own cryptocurrency, 67 percent of whom are under age 45, according to the report.