A major breakthrough has just arrived for Bitcoin and the crypto industry from one of the most influential financial regulatory bodies in the United States. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees the country’s largest mortgage liquidity providers, has issued a directive that could change how digital assets are viewed. 

Under this directive, mortgage liquidity providers have been officially ordered to begin preparations for considering cryptocurrencies as part of a borrower’s asset portfolio during mortgage evaluations.

Crypto As Mortgage-Eligible Asset

In a recent post on the social media platform X, FHFA Director Bill Pulte issued a directive instructing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare proposals that allow homebuyers to count cryptocurrency holdings held on US-regulated exchanges as part of their asset reserves for mortgage applications without converting them into dollars.

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Crypto assets have always been excluded from mortgage risk assessments unless converted to U.S. dollars before closing. However, this recent move breaks that barrier. This policy shift aligns with former President Donald Trump’s campaigns to establish the United States as the crypto capital of the world. Pulte, who was recently sworn in as the 5th Director of U.S. Federal Housing FHFA in March 2025, is now part of those taking steps to make this vision a reality. 

According to the order, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must also factor in market volatility and enforce strong risk-based adjustments before implementing the new assessment method. Fannie and Freddie are government-sponsored enterprises that do not issue mortgages themselves but play an important role in the housing market by purchasing home loans on the secondary market and setting the criteria for the loans they are willing to acquire.

Bitcoin To Benefit The Most, But Where Does XRP Stand?

Bitcoin is going to benefit the most from this policy update. Being the largest and most widely held cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has long been considered the digital gold standard, which makes it a natural candidate for institutional recognition. 

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Its established presence on U.S.-regulated exchanges and deep liquidity profile through Spot Bitcoin ETFs tick nearly every box laid out in the FHFA’s directive.

However, the decision raises an important question for XRP holders as to whether the same regulation will be extended to XRP. Unlike Bitcoin, XRP has had a complicated history with regulatory agencies in the US, most notably the SEC. Although recent legal clarity around XRP has allowed the crypto to resume trading on major US-based exchanges, it isn’t really certain whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be quick to include it under this new directive.

Nonetheless, the FHFA’s directive doesn’t specify eligible tokens. It simply refers to cryptocurrencies held on US-regulated exchanges. As such, the directive could be quick to include US-based cryptocurrencies like XRP and Ethereum alongside Bitcoin. Other countries are already far ahead with XRP in real estate. In Japan, for instance, Open House Group allows XRP payments for property purchases in cities such as Tokyo and Osaka. Dubai is also using the XRP Ledger to tokenize real estate.

Featured image from Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com

Cardano founder believes that the TVL on the network could have surged above $19 billion if people were allowed to count their staked tokens. 

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson noted that the amount of total value locked (TVL) on the network could have been worth billions of dollars if staked ADA were counted.

Hoskinson, the current CEO of Input Output Global (IOG), the firm responsible for the research and development of the Cardano blockchain, made this known in a tweet today.

According to Hoskinson, Cardano’s TVL could have been worth more than $19 billion dollars if the project’s developers made it mandatory for users to lock their ADA in order to stake them across various protocols.

“Fun Fact, if you counted the staked Ada, Cardano’s TVL would be over 19 billion dollars. Why don’t we count it? Because you don’t need to lock your Ada to stake it,” the IOG CEO tweeted earlier today.

Fun Fact, if you counted the staked Ada, cardano’s TVL would be over 19 billion dollars. Why don’t we count it? Because you don’t need to lock your Ada to stake it.

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 6, 2022

Many Cardano enthusiasts have expressed mixed reactions toward the development, with many of these investors calling on decentralized finance (DeFi) data tracking platforms, including DeFiLlama, to confirm Hoskinson’s assertion.

@0xngmi @DefiLlama Any thoughts on this?https://t.co/xoGf0gkkie

— St₳ke with Pride Ardana & Hosky pool (@StakeWithPride) May 6, 2022

Cardano Still Far From $1B in TVL

Meanwhile, the total value locked in Cardano is yet to reach a billion dollars despite the positive energy that surrounded the launch of the smart contract functionality that was unveiled in September 2021 during the Alonzo upgrade.

It is worth noting that although Cardano enabled smart contract functionality in September 2021, decentralized applications (dApps), including exchanges did not launch on the network until after a few months.

Despite the launch of dApps, the total value locked (TVL) across various protocols on the first day of 2022 was close to $0 and considered insignificant to keep track of.

Interestingly, the launch of SundaeSwap decentralized exchange became a game changer, as Cardano TVL surged from $0 to more than $200 million in less than four months.

Cardano saw its TVL surged to as high as $326 million on March 24, 2022. However, the value had since dropped significantly following the dip of the ADA coin, which has traded below $1 for most of the year.

At the time of writing this line, Cardano’s TVL is worth $202 million and it is down 9.31% in the last 24 hours, data on DeFiLlama shows.

Hoskinson Confident of an Imminent Surge

While Cardano’s TVL is yet to reach a billion, Hoskinson is confident that the value will surge next month after the Hydra Hard Fork is launched, which is believed to be a major proponent of luring more developers to build on the network.

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