Coinbase, Fannie Mae to Enable Crypto-Backed Mortgages

The program, first reported on by the Wall Street Journal, enables borrowers to transfer their digital assets from Coinbase to a Better custody wallet while retaining ownership, avoiding the need to sell crypto and trigger taxable events. For USDC holders, the structure allows them to continue earning rewards while their assets serve as collateral.

The mortgages will carry rates 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points higher than standard 30-year loans, depending on borrower profiles, according to a spokesperson for Coinbase.

Unlike typical crypto lending products, the loans have no margin calls—if Bitcoin drops in value, the terms of the mortgage remain unchanged and no additional collateral is required. Borrowers face liquidation risk only after 60-day payment delinquency, under terms similar to those of conventional mortgages.

The disjuncture between “paper” crude prices and realities on the ground has many experts worried. “The market is trying to grind higher because the role of this market is to anticipate and look forward to what’s coming,” said oil market researcher Rory Johnston, author of the Commodity Context newsletter. But “anytime prices get very high at all—much higher than $100 or $110 per barrel—we see pretty concerted efforts in the White House to jawbone the price lower.” The result is an “ever-larger dislocation between future markets trying to handicap risk and physical markets, particularly in the Gulf region, reflecting this deep, deep tightness.”

As Gulf producers run out of storage for trapped oil, they’ll need to continue “shutting in” wells, i.e., stopping production at specific sites. It will likely take months to get those operations—now accounting for around 9.5 million lost barrels per day—back up and running after the strait opens. Even if the war does end relatively soon, traffic through it might never return to normal.

Edwards added that because there are no income limits on crop insurance, the top 10% of farmers capture 56% of all subsidies in the program.

Economists have been predicting or warning about a recession every single year for the past eight years, and they were only right once – kinda.

Bamboozled said:

Asian stocks jump after Wall Street soars on renewed hopes of Iran war end
https://apnews.com/article/stock-markets-war-oil-trump-iran-80a8391c0729872ae2a486526dbc8abd

Bamboozled said:

Oh naive greedy stock markets

Oil consumers paid dollars for energy, those dollars flowed to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and from there back into Washington’s debt. For 50 years, this petrodollar loop quietly subsidized American borrowing costs and cemented the greenback’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

The 10-year Treasury yield, rather than falling on safe-haven demand as it has in every major recent crisis, climbed from 3.9% at the end of February to above 4.4% within weeks. The rates desk at Bank of America Corp. offered a dry summary: “Foreign official sectors are selling US Treasury bonds.”

The share of Treasuries held by foreign investors had already fallen to around 32%, down from half in the early 2010s. Central banks became net sellers in early 2025. For the first time since 1996, global central banks now hold more gold in aggregate than US government bonds. These were slow-moving trends, easy to dismiss as noise.

Scholes said they’re asking city officials to reconsider the tax rates slapped on businesses in hope they city’s economy doesn’t tank in the future.

“It’s time to go to our city leaders and say ‘hey we don’t need more businesses paying taxes we need to grow jobs, we need more businesses in the city paying taxes’,” Scholes said.