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Coinbase and mortgage fintech Better Home & Finance Holding Co. announced Wednesday a product that lets US homebuyers pledge Bitcoin or USDC as collateral for mortgage down payments, with the loans structured to qualify under Fannie Mae guidelines. Fannie Mae is a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) currently in federal conservatorship; it purchases and securitises home loans rather than originating them, and it backs roughly 40% of all securitised US mortgages. This makes the new product the first crypto-collateralised home loan accepted within mainstream American mortgage infrastructure. On the same day, Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings disclosed it had sold 15,133 BTC over three weeks to buy back over $1 billion in convertible debt, and Bhutan transferred another 519 BTC to new wallets as its 2026 liquidation continues. The contrast is sharp: one sovereign state is monetising its Bitcoin reserves to fund public services while the US quietly embeds crypto into the foundations of its housing finance system.

Fannie Mae Opens the Door

The Coinbase and Better product is structured so borrowers do not need to sell their crypto, which would normally trigger a capital gains tax event. Assets move from a Coinbase account into a custody wallet managed by Better, but the borrower retains ownership rights throughout. If Bitcoin drops in value, the mortgage terms do not change. Collateral is only at risk after a 60-day payment default, which mirrors the timeline on conventional loans.

Borrowers pay a rate premium of 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points above standard 30-year rates. USDC holders also continue earning staking and yield rewards on their collateral while it is pledged.

Better CEO Vishal Garg framed the product around a structural housing problem: "41% of American families fail to buy a home because they don't have enough funds for the down payment, even though they have money elsewhere in savings." Mark Troianovski of Coinbase put it more bluntly: "Private bankers don't sell assets to buy stuff; they actually take loans against assets."

Bitcoin-backed mortgage products are not entirely new. Ledn has offered them since 2021, but those products targeted high-net-worth individuals outside any conforming loan framework. The Coinbase and Better product is the first designed for everyday homebuyers within the mainstream US mortgage system, which is the basis of its novelty and broader significance.

Newrez, a lender owned by Rithm Capital (~$53B AUM), had already announced a similar crypto mortgage programme in late 2025. The Coinbase and Better launch confirms the approach is gaining traction beyond a single institution.

MARA Sells Bitcoin to Shrink Its Debt Load

MARA Holdings sold 15,133 BTC between March 4 and March 25. Per company disclosure, the average sale price was approximately $65,300 per coin, generating around $1.1 billion in proceeds. That average sits roughly 8% below market prices recorded during the same window, likely reflecting the mechanics of large block or over-the-counter execution. The company used roughly $1.0 billion of those proceeds to repurchase its own zero-coupon convertible notes at a discount of about 9% below face value, locking in approximately $88.1 million in savings.

Total convertible debt on MARA's balance sheet dropped from $3.298 billion to $2.297 billion, a reduction of about 30%. With Bitcoin trading approximately 45% below its all-time high near $126,000, the zero-coupon convertible notes had become a structural liability rather than an instrument likely to settle in equity, making the buyback a rational deleveraging move rather than a bearish signal. The company now holds 38,689 BTC, placing it third among publicly listed Bitcoin holders after Twenty One Capital (43,514 BTC) and Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which holds 761,068 BTC after purchasing another 22,337 BTC in mid-March.

MARA CEO Fred Thiel described the logic directly: "By retiring over $1 billion of face value debt at a discount, we captured approximately $88 million in value that would otherwise have been lost, reduced potential shareholder dilution, and leveraged our bitcoin holdings to meaningfully de-lever the balance sheet on our terms."

MARA shares rose 10% in premarket trading. The sale marks a departure from Strategy's accumulate-and-hold approach, with MARA instead using its Bitcoin reserves as an active balance sheet tool.

Bhutan's Drawdown Continues

On March 25, the Royal Government of Bhutan transferred 519.707 BTC worth approximately $36.8 million to new wallets. One destination wallet has been tagged by Arkham Intelligence as linked to trading firm QCP Capital, though on-chain wallet tags represent an identification rather than a confirmed counterparty relationship. Bhutan's holdings have fallen from a peak of roughly 13,000 BTC in late 2024 to 4,453 BTC, currently valued at about $315.9 million. Total outflows in 2026 now exceed $150 million.

Bhutan built its Bitcoin stack through state-backed hydroelectric mining run by sovereign wealth fund Druk Holding and Investments Ltd., giving it a near-zero cost basis. Proceeds are being directed toward public services and civil servant salaries. For a country with a GDP of approximately $3 billion, the remaining holdings still represent a meaningful national asset, but the pace of sales will draw attention from other South Asian governments exploring state-level crypto strategies.

Emerging Markets: Price Pressure and Opportunity

The combined weight of MARA's three-week sale and Bhutan's ongoing liquidation has added downward pressure to a Bitcoin market already under stress. BTC traded between $69,984 and $71,374 on March 26, and the Crypto Fear and Greed Index sat at 8, a reading categorised as Extreme Fear. For users in Nigeria (ranked second globally for crypto adoption per the Chainalysis Global Adoption Index), Pakistan (third), and India (first, with an estimated 150 million users), who rely on Bitcoin as a store of value or remittance tool, sustained price depression has direct purchasing-power consequences.

Trust Wallet Launches Agent Kit for AI-Driven Blockchain Execution

Trust Wallet, owned by Changpeng Zhao (known as CZ), Binance's founder and former CEO who stepped down in November 2023 following a guilty plea to US anti-money laundering violations, added a developer dimension to the week's news with the launch of its Agent Kit. The toolkit allows AI agents to execute real transactions across 25 or more blockchains. Trust Wallet had previously launched a Developer Portal giving AI agents read-only access to data across more than 100 chains; the Agent Kit extends that infrastructure by adding full execution capability, a material step beyond the existing read-only layer.

The kit operates in two modes: fully autonomous execution within user-set rules, or a suggestion mode where the AI proposes transactions for human approval. It integrates with Model Context Protocol, a standard for connecting AI systems to external data and tools, and is compatible with Claude Code, Anthropic's developer coding environment.

The launch arrives at a timely moment: over 68% of new DeFi protocols launched in Q1 2026 included at least one autonomous AI agent, making production-ready agentic tooling increasingly central to how the ecosystem is being built.

With India accounting for 15.2% of global Web3 developers according to the Hashed Emergent India Web3 Landscape Report, and Nigeria home to more than 30 million Binance users growing at roughly 4.5% monthly, the Agent Kit gives builders in both markets a production-ready foundation for agentic financial applications. Pakistan, ranked third globally for crypto adoption and with active developer communities focused on cross-chain remittance and swap infrastructure, also stands to benefit directly from the kit's multi-chain execution capabilities.

Looking Ahead

The Fannie Mae approval carries a longer-term signal for regions far outside the US. The core structure of pledging crypto as loan collateral without selling it is not geography-specific. In markets like India, where home prices in Mumbai and Bengaluru have increasingly disconnected from median incomes, the model could find direct application within existing loan-against-securities structures if digital assets receive formal collateral recognition. Regulators in India have been gradually developing stablecoin and crypto taxation frameworks since 2025, and the US milestone sets a precedent that policymakers elsewhere will be watching closely.

For readers tracking these three stories in parallel, the key metrics to monitor are Bhutan's remaining drawdown trajectory from its current 4,453 BTC, MARA's evolving debt-to-BTC ratio as it manages its restructured balance sheet, and developer adoption of the Trust Wallet Agent Kit across India, Nigeria, and Pakistan's builder communities.