Sell your crypto or borrow against it to buy a house?

Short answer: at today's numbers, borrowing against bitcoin costs 9.25%–11.49% APR from the retail lenders that publish rates, against a 7.32% 30-year conventional mortgage. That is a 1.93%–5.30% spread you pay every year to avoid a capital-gains bill you pay once — and the loan can liquidate your coins in a drawdown. Selling only what the purchase needs, when the purchase funds, is the cheaper trade for most buyers. The table below refreshes itself; the math under it does not change.

There is also a third path between selling everything and borrowing against it: convert only the down payment and closing costs, finance the rest with a traditional mortgage from your own lender, and leave the remaining position where it is — documented, and counted toward reserves where the loan program allows. It appears in the carrying-cost table below.

Rates below are pulled from each provider's published figures or on-chain market and cached for a few hours. Last data point: . RealOpen is not a lender and is not affiliated with any provider named here.

What it costs to borrow against crypto right now

Three tiers of borrowing, one conventional benchmark. "Live" rows come from the source on each page load; "last verified" rows show the most recent hand-checked number when a source is unreachable.

ProductRateTerms that matterSource
Ledn — bitcoin-backed loan9.25%–11.49% APR · live50% initial LTV, 12 months, tiered by loan size (the low end needs $2M+). Margin call if BTC falls far enough; lender sells your coins if you cannot top up.Published pricing table
Figure — crypto-backed loan10.00%–12.62% APR · liveBTC/ETH/SOL, 12-month interest-only. Low end at 50% LTV, high end up to 75% LTV; 1% origination is inside the APR.Published rate card
Coinbase — USDC loan against BTC (variable)5.24% APY · liveRuns on the Morpho cbBTC/USDC market on Base, 86% max LLTV. Rate floats with pool utilization and has swung by whole points inside a week. Coinbase's newer fixed-rate loans are quoted in-app only.Morpho market (on-chain)
Aave v3 — USDC variable borrow (Ethereum)4.69% APY · liveThe on-chain rate for stablecoin leverage against ETH or wrapped BTC. It floats with pool utilization (USDT on the same market has printed 14% this week). No KYC, no paperwork a title company will accept, and the same liquidation math.Aave API (on-chain)
Crypto mortgages — Milo, Better × CoinbaseQuote onlyno published rateMilo says "7–9%", up to 100% LTV with a 1× pledge. Better × Coinbase wants 250% collateral and may re-lend your pledged BTC. Both are two loans wearing one trench coat: a mortgage plus a margin loan.Provider sites (no feed)
30-year conventional — Freddie Mac PMMS7.32% · live15-year fixed 6.68%. The benchmark everything above has to beat. Depending on the loan program, verified crypto may count toward reserves without pledging a coin — agency loans require dollars; some non-agency programs accept eligible crypto.Freddie Mac weekly survey
10-year Treasury5.00% · liveThe risk-free reference. The gap between this and the loan rates above is the premium you pay for leverage on a volatile asset.U.S. Treasury daily yield curve

One year of carrying cost on $400,000

Interest only, before fees, on the $400,000 a buyer actually needs at the table. Computed from the live rates above.

PathRateInterest, year one
Bitcoin-backed loan, best published tier9.25%$37,000
Bitcoin-backed loan, typical tier11.49%$45,960
Coinbase USDC loan (variable, today)5.24%$20,960
30-year conventional mortgage7.32%$29,280
Convert $80k of BTC for the down payment; mortgage the remaining $320k7.32%$23,424 + one-time gains tax on the $80,000 sold; the rest of the position stays put
Sell $400k of BTC when the purchase funds (outright purchase)0.00%One-time long-term gains tax (15–20% of the gain, plus 3.8% NIIT above the threshold) — then nothing

The part the loan calculators skip: liquidation

A loan rate is the floor of what borrowing against crypto costs, not the ceiling. Every product above has a line where the lender starts selling your coins. At a 50% LTV loan with a typical margin call around 70–80% LTV, bitcoin falling 30–35% from your entry gets you a notice measured in days. Bitcoin has done that nine times since 2017. If you are forced to sell at the bottom you realize the gain anyway, at the worst price, while still owing the interest.

Selling what the house needs when the purchase funds has none of that tail. You keep the rest of the position, you pay tax on the slice you sold, and nobody else holds your keys. That is the trade RealOpen is built for: verify the wallet, issue a Proof of Funds letter, convert at the table, wire dollars to escrow.

When borrowing still makes sense

Three honest cases. Your cost basis is near zero and the gain would land in the 20% bracket plus NIIT, so deferral is worth a few points of interest for a year or two. You expect to repay inside twelve months from other income, so the loan is a bridge, not a position. Or you are buying an investment property where the loan interest is itself deductible against rents. Outside those, the spread in the table is the price of a conviction trade, and it should be sized like one.

Want crypto to count without pledging it? Depending on the loan program, a traditional mortgage can count verified holdings toward reserves (agency loans require dollars; some non-agency programs accept eligible crypto) while you fund the down payment from your own wallet and finance the rest. No collateral, no liquidation line.

How these numbers are sourced

Ledn and Figure publish their rate tables, so we read them. Coinbase's variable loan runs on a public Morpho market, so we read the market. Aave is on-chain. Freddie Mac and the Treasury publish official daily and weekly files. Milo, Better × Coinbase, Nexo and Coinbase's fixed-rate product only quote inside an application, so they appear as words, not numbers. Each live row carries the date of its data point; if a source is unreachable the row shows the last value we verified by hand and says so.

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