Crypto is no longer just a trading asset. For a growing number of high-net-worth individuals and investors, it's becoming a core part of their portfolio — and now people want to put it to work in real estate. One company has already made this possible, with more than $100 million in crypto-backed mortgages originated, including a single transaction worth $12 million. Joining us to explain this and more is Josip Rupena, Founder and CEO of Milo. Josip, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Good morning.
The simple question to start — what is a crypto mortgage and how exactly does it work?
That's a great question — one of my favourites. A crypto mortgage is really about helping people buy homes without having to sell their Bitcoin. For a lot of individuals who have built up Bitcoin wealth over the last ten years, it's been a very difficult trade-off: keep the Bitcoin or buy a home. With our product, we allow them to finance up to 100% of a home purchase by holding their Bitcoin as additional collateral alongside the property. They don't have to make that trade-off anymore. They keep the upside of their Bitcoin, buy a home, and move on to the next phase of life.
You've originated over $100 million. Who is actually borrowing — who is your typical client?
These are individuals typically between 30 and 55 years old, though we've worked with people in their 20s and in their 70s as well. Many are buying their first home. They have significant wealth, they've been saving and working hard, and they feel ready — but home prices have increased so much post-Covid that it's kept some of them on the sidelines. We are starting to see pockets across the US where prices are coming down and sellers are becoming more realistic, which is giving our customers more confidence to put in offers and transact.
Crypto is volatile and mortgages are long term. How do you reconcile those two things in a single product?
It took a lot of work with our legal and regulatory teams. The key innovation was creating the first dual-collateralised mortgage — where you're not just taking a lien on a property, but adding additional collateral to assess a customer's full financial profile. Not just their income today, but how they can realistically make payments into the future. The market wasn't recognising Bitcoin — or frankly other assets like stocks and bonds — in mortgage underwriting. We said: this is a significant part of someone's financial profile and it should be considered. Long-term holders of these assets are very comfortable having them assessed for repayment purposes. We didn't accept the status quo. And as more assets get tokenised — equities and other instruments — this could widen the set of assets we use to underwrite borrowers in the future.
Where does the US stand on regulation — and how does that compare to markets like the UAE?
The US mortgage market is one of the largest in the world, partly because it's heavily subsidised with significant government involvement in setting rates, policies, and underwriting standards. In other markets that aren't as deep — where you don't have securitisations or institutional investors buying mortgage-backed instruments — it requires a more proactive stance from local governments to look at these test cases and consider how to apply them. The innovation we've done with crypto mortgages is unlikely to get implemented elsewhere unless a government actively decides this is worth exploring and collaborates with companies already doing it. Collaboration is key.
Practically speaking — does a borrower have to sell their crypto to qualify, or can they keep their position and still close on the property?
They get to keep their Bitcoin — that's the power of the product. The decision a borrower makes when working with us is really just: what home do I want to buy? The Bitcoin collateral, combined with the underlying property, gives us enough comfort to lend. And critically, if they couldn't make payments, we have liquid collateral in Bitcoin — we don't have to foreclose on the property the way a traditional mortgage lender would. These borrowers are also deeply emotionally attached to their Bitcoin. They've held it for years and chosen not to sell. Since we started originating in 2022, every single one of our borrowers has remained current — through Bitcoin going from $40,000 down to $15,000 and all the way up to $124,000, now sitting at $60,000. They want to pay. They can pay. And that's the common sense underwriting logic we've built this on.
Where does Milo go from here — what does mainstream crypto lending look like two to three years out?
We're seeing growing interest from international investors who want to invest in US real estate and hold a diverse set of assets. So this is expanding beyond US-based borrowers to global consumers wanting exposure to American property markets. As more asset types come into play — not just Bitcoin, but equities and other tokenised assets — the addressable market widens significantly. From our side, we're continuing to expand into more states, refining the product to make it even more compelling, and qualifying more individuals to get into homes in the US.
Josip, thank you so much for your time. Very interesting to see where this is heading. Thank you for joining us on Capital Markets.
Thank you for having us.
