Coinbase Will Let Homebuyers Use Bitcoin in Place of a Cash Mortgage Down Payment

In Today's Note

• Better Mortgage and Coinbase opened their token-backed mortgage to Coinbase One members, letting eligible borrowers post BTC or USDC as down-payment collateral with the first lien conforming under Fannie Mae guidelines. The pre-launch waitlist represented more than $260M in projected loan volume.
• Headline PCE held at 3.7% in July against expectations of a dip to 3.6%, driving the dollar's biggest rise in over two weeks; September pause odds stay near 64%. Nvidia beat estimates with $96.22B in Q2 revenue, and its shares rose 7.27% after hours.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• US equities ended the mid-week session flat as traders awaited Nvidia Corp.’s earnings report, with the S&P 500 closing at -0.021% and the Nasdaq-100 ending the day up marginally, by 0.052%.
• BTC continued to consolidate just below $80K as the rally in crypto markets takes a slight breather this week.
• Sentiment in options markets continues to be firmly positive, though not at the extreme levels seen last week.
• The 7-day 25-delta put-call skew for BTC and ETH trades at 3.8% and 4.8% respectively, indicating continued preference for upside participation over downside protection, though below the 7.4% and 15.9% highs of last week.
• Funding rates in perp markets have also eased from their highs, though remain positive.

• Shares of Nvidia rose 7.27% in after-market trading as the firm reported better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results, and issued revenue guidance that exceeded market estimates.
• Earnings per share came in at $2.22 versus an estimated $2.10, while revenues in Q2 were recorded at $96.22B against market expectations of $92.17B, more than double the amount for the same period a year earlier. The chipmaker also expects revenues of $108B in the next quarter.

• Short-dated US treasuries underperformed yesterday with the yield on the two-year treasury up 4bps from 4.18% to 4.22% after the BEA’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report showed sticky inflation in the US.
• Headline PCE inflation remained at 3.7% in July, the same as in June versus expectations of a slight drop to 3.6%.
• The month-over-month figure also was higher than expected at 0.2% in July after falling 0.1% in June (the lowest reading since April 2020).
• Core PCE advanced 3.3% in July from a year earlier, in line with market expectations.

• That was taken alongside separate data from the Commerce Department which showed the US economy expanded at a solid, unrevised 1.5% pace in Q2 2026.
• The data was not enough to shift the odds of a rate pause in September’s FOMC, which remains around 64%, though markets are still pricing in a rate hike by December.
• The PCE report did drive a rebound in the US dollar which rose by its most in over two weeks, recovering around half of its losses following Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Treasury buyback announcement last week.

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto

• Better Mortgage, a U.S. digital mortgage lender, and Coinbase have made their token-backed mortgage available to Coinbase One members, allowing eligible borrowers to use bitcoin or USDC as collateral for a down payment, with the first lien structured as a conforming mortgage under Fannie Mae guidelines.
• Better said 41% of its pre-approved customers meet income and credit requirements but lack sufficient cash for a traditional down payment, while eligible Coinbase One members receive a lender credit of 1% of the mortgage value, capped at $10,000, toward closing costs.
• The companies said the product’s pre-launch waitlist represented more than $260M in projected loan volume, with 60% of respondents planning to purchase a home within six months.

• The Hyperliquid Policy Center, a policy group focused on decentralized finance, and TradeXYZ, a perpetuals trading platform, urged the CFTC to establish a U.S. regulatory framework for oil perpetual futures, including 24/7 trading alongside traditional dated futures.
• The groups argued that weekend market closures can prevent U.S. businesses from hedging oil-price risk during geopolitical shocks, citing supply disruptions following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran when traditional oil futures were closed but onchain markets continued trading.
• They called for technology-neutral, principles-based rules and clearer CFTC definitions around timing requirements, as the agency considers how crude-oil perpetuals and round-the-clock derivatives trading could operate under U.S. regulation.

• KiiChain, an on-chain FX infrastructure provider for payments, stablecoin settlement and cross-border liquidity, has integrated the TRON network to expand its 24/7 foreign exchange and stablecoin payment capabilities.
• Through the integration, the KiiChain App will support deposits, swaps and yield vaults for TRON-based assets, including USDT on TRC20.
• The partnership is designed to enable faster cross-border payments, treasury management and FX execution using TRON’s low-cost, high-throughput settlement infrastructure.
• KiiChain said more than $500M in on-chain FX transaction volume is already flowing through its platform on TRON.
• The integration will give KiiChain’s more than 200 enterprise clients and 360,000 registered users access to TRON’s stablecoin ecosystem.
• TRON currently supports more than $90B in circulating USDT.
• The two companies are aiming to combine 24/7 FX settlement, stablecoin payments and multi-chain liquidity for businesses and institutions.

• The SEC, the U.S. securities regulator chaired by Paul Atkins, has sent proposed changes to its crypto custody rules to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, seeking to clarify how investment advisers and investment companies can custody digital assets.
• The SEC said the proposal would modernize existing custody requirements and remove outdated provisions while maintaining investor protections, following questions from investment advisers about holding crypto for clients while complying with federal rules.
• The proposal forms part of the SEC’s broader digital-asset regulatory overhaul, which has included guidance on memecoins and staking and the proposed Regulation Crypto Assets framework for token offerings.

• Connecticut has sued Kalshi in an effort to stop the platform from offering sports-related event contracts in the state.
• The state is seeking a court injunction requiring Kalshi to halt what Connecticut considers unlicensed sports betting.
• Attorney General William Tong argued that sports event contracts are effectively sports wagers and are still subject to Connecticut gambling and consumer protection laws.
• Kalshi disputes that position, arguing that its event contracts are federally regulated derivatives overseen by the CFTC.
• Kalshi has held designated contract market status with the CFTC since 2020 and says federal regulation preempts state gambling laws.
• Earlier this month, a federal judge denied Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have blocked Connecticut from enforcing its rules.
• Kalshi has appealed that decision to the Second Circuit.
• Connecticut is now one of more than a dozen U.S. states that have taken enforcement action or filed lawsuits against Kalshi over sports event contracts.

• The UK government plans to give the Bank of England, the country’s central bank, a new secondary objective to support innovation in payments and digital money, including stablecoins, while retaining financial stability as its primary mandate.
• The objective is intended to keep regulation aligned with developments in payments technology and tokenization, with the Bank required to report annually to Parliament on its progress.
• The proposal follows broader UK efforts to establish a regulatory framework for cryptoassets and stablecoins while maintaining a pro-growth approach to financial-services regulation.

• Mirae Asset Financial Group, a South Korean financial services group managing about $1.1T in client assets, plans to build a $109B digital asset business around Digital X, the crypto exchange operator formerly known as Korbit.
• Digital X will focus on crypto, stablecoins, real-world assets and security tokens, including tokenized gold, silver and electricity, with Mirae targeting profitability by 2027.
• Mirae is considering up to $218M in additional capital for the business, with a longer-term plan to integrate traditional and digital assets through a global onchain financial platform.

• StarkWare, a blockchain scaling and cryptography company, says it successfully executed the first quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction using a technique called signature grinding.
• The method conceals exploitable public-key material but requires substantial computation and direct submission to a willing miner, with MARA, a publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, mining the transaction through its Slipstream service.
• StarkWare views the technique as an interim safeguard rather than a complete solution, arguing that Bitcoin still requires a protocol-level upgrade for broader quantum resistance.

• DeFi Development Corp., a Nasdaq-listed company and one of the largest public SOL treasury firms, has launched State of Solana, a real-time data and research platform focused on the Solana ecosystem.
• The platform brings together Solana market, network, staking, validator, yield and ecosystem metrics in a single dashboard.
• DeFi Development said the goal is to give investors and ecosystem participants a broader view of Solana’s fundamentals beyond SOL’s price.
• The company plans to expand the platform with additional datasets, visualizations, research tools and ecosystem insights.

This Week's Calendar

Charts of the Day

Figure 1. Block Scholes BTC Risk-Appetite Index (white, left-hand axis) and BTC spot price (orange, right-hand axis).

Figure 2. Block Scholes ETH Risk-Appetite Index (white, left-hand axis) and ETH spot price (purple, right-hand axis).

Figure 3. BTC at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 4. ETH at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 5. BTC 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 6. ETH 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Block Scholes is an FCA-regulated institutional crypto derivatives analytics platform. Live data, IV surfaces, and backtesting available via blockscholes.com.

Recent Research from Block Scholes

• Volatility Report: July 2026
• Is Bitcoin showing greater sensitivity to US CPI releases again?
• Are ETFs and Treasuries Selling ETH's Volatility?
• Block Scholes x Castle Labs: The Renaissance of Onchain Options
• How On-Chain Markets Have Priced Recent IPOs
• From Aggregation to Execution: The Next Layer of Onchain Trading Infrastructure
• Tokenised Markets on Bitget UEX: Liquidity Conditions in Bitget’s Real World Asset Perpetual Markets