The discussions have sparked concern among some at the department, especially about the prospect of paying recipients of major federal grants in cryptocurrency, an uninsured digital asset associated with financial speculation, dramatic swings in value and transnational crime.

The focus of the discussions so far has been experimenting with using the underlying technology that makes crypto possible — the blockchain — to monitor HUD grants. Blockchain advocates argue that the technology is valuable on its own for such purposes. But the primary use of blockchain, according to experts, is for crypto transactions.

“It’s just introducing another unregulated security into the housing market as though 2008, 2009 didn’t happen,” one HUD staffer said, referring to the subprime mortgage crisis. “I don’t see any way this will help anything. I see a lot of ways this could hurt,” said the official, who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The HUD discussions have covered the potential use of a stablecoin, a form of crypto that is pegged to another asset to avoid wild swings in value, although such swings have happened in the past.

The blockchain idea is being pushed, a HUD official told colleagues, by Irving Dennis. Dennis, the agency’s new principal deputy chief financial officer, is a former partner at the global consulting giant EY, also commonly known by its original name, Ernst & Young. EY itself is involved in the proposal as well: An executive of the firm discussed the idea with HUD officials last month.

The crypto industry has found an ally in President Donald Trump, whose administration has tapped industryboosters to lead federal agencies, backed off investigations into crypto firms and created a “strategic Bitcoin reserve.” (Bitcoin plunged $5,000 within an hour of the news of the reserve’s opening on Thursday.) Trump himself has significant financial interests in crypto. On Friday, the White House is scheduled to host a “crypto summit” with leading figures from the industry.

The proposal at HUD indicates a new way that the administration may seek to bolster the industry: by incorporating blockchain and possibly cryptocurrency into the routine spending and accounting practices of federal agencies. It’s a move that would align with the apparent desire of Trump adviser Elon Musk to use the blockchain to monitor federal spending.

Dennis and HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett both denied the accounts of their colleagues. “The department has no plans for blockchain or stablecoin,” Lovett said. “Education is not implementation.”

Robert Judson, the EY executive involved in the conversations, confirmed that they took place. “We as a firm were having discussions with select individuals at that agency,” he said when reached by phone. Judson told ProPublica he would seek EY’s approval for a full interview, then didn’t call back.

The White House, EY and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

HUD officials held at least two meetings about the blockchain proposal last month. A list of attendees to the first meeting included staffers from the offices of the CFO and Community Planning and Development. CPD administers billions of dollars in grants that support low- and moderate-income people, including funding to develop affordable housing, run homeless shelters, support disaster recovery, relocate domestic violence survivors and build parks, sewers and community centers. It was the CFO’s office that called for the meeting, one person told ProPublica.

Also listed as a meeting attendee was Judson from EY. For years Judson has advocated for the blockchain, a digital ledger of sorts that creates an immutable record of transactions saved across multiple computers. Boosters of the technology cast it as a way to cut middlemen such as banks and credit card companies out of financial transactions and make those transactions more transparent and secure. Judson has written that the blockchain can help organizations prevent money from being siphoned off for unintended purposes. “As digital assets such as stable coins or digital currencies take hold, more powerful applications will emerge for integrated value exchange,” he wrote. Dennis, who served as HUD CFO in the first Trump administration, also wrote, in a 2021 book, that the agency should use technology such as “blockchain, robotics, and next-generation financial management systems.”

Stablecoins are backed by reserves including traditional currency, commodities and Treasury securities. That is supposed to ensure that their value — unlike that of, say, Bitcoin — doesn’t fluctuate. However, on several high-profile occasions, the value of stablecoins has done just that.

At the HUD meeting, attendees discussed a “proof of concept” project in which CPD would begin to track the funding going to a single CPD grant recipient and possibly subrecipients on the blockchain. The need for the project was “not well articulated,” one attendee later wrote in meeting notes.

Following the meeting, a HUD official wrote and circulated a memo within the agency panning the idea. “Without exaggeration, every imaginable implementation of this at HUD appears dangerous and inefficient,” the memo reads.

HUD has no difficulty tracking grant spending, the memo contended, making the new technology unnecessary. Incorporating it would be time-consuming, complicated and require extensive training. And, if the project involved paying grantees in cryptocurrency instead of dollars, it would inject volatility and unpredictability into the funding stream, even if the currency was a stablecoin.

In subsequent discussions with HUD staffers, the memo’s author described the proposal as a “beachhead” at HUD for the introduction of cryptocurrency, which the author compared to “monopoly money.”

CPD officials continued to raise concerns in a follow-up meeting, a recording of which was reviewed by ProPublica. (Judson did not attend this one.) Some attendees saw merit in the blockchain idea, suggesting it could reduce inaccurate data from grant recipients and enable real-time reporting and monitoring of their spending.

“Maybe there is something that we could learn from it,” one said, “especially if we feel like the broader federal government is moving towards some sort of stablecoin option in the future.”

One official asked why the agency was considering the project. “Because it’s sexy,” someone replied. Another said, “Irv has asked us to pursue blockchain, so that’s why we are looking at it,” referring to Dennis.

Many details were left unexplained at the meeting, including, crucially, whether the proposal would involve paying grantees in cryptocurrency. But some signaled that it would.

“You can do it with what would be attached to a stable currency. That would be up to Treasury, and I think they’re already going that way, for what it’s worth,” one official said. “It would simulate the dollar.”

Another added, “It would basically be a cryptocurrency that is linked to the U.S. dollar on a one-for-one basis.”

A finance official suggested the idea could be applied more broadly across HUD. “We are looking at this for the entire enterprise. We just wanted to start in CPD,” he said. The agency is also considering the idea for the Office of Public and Indian Housing, he said, for “tenant eligibility and stuff like that.” That office serves the millions of people who live in public and federally subsidized housing.

This is not the first time that federal officials have considered incorporating the blockchain into the work of the government. Agencies including the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce and even HUD have been involved in a study, a prototype and a working group in recent years. But those who monitor the crypto industry were not aware of as broad an application of the technology in the federal government as what HUD officials have recently discussed.

Some crypto experts were dubious. “It’s a terrible idea,” said Corey Frayer, a former official at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he focused on the crypto markets and financial stability. “It is absolutely wild that anyone with any sense would consider this.”

Frayer, now at the Consumer Federation of America, warned that HUD grants paid in stablecoin could fall in value. He expressed greatest concern about the notion that the proposal could expand to other parts of the agency. If that included, for example, introducing stablecoin into the $1.3 trillion in mortgage insurance provided by the Federal Housing Administration, a fluctuation in the value of the stablecoin could have a major economic impact, he said.

“Imagine a world in which all of the government involvement in the housing industry, all of the funds circulating in that environment, dropped in value by 13%,” he said, citing a 2023 episode in which a stablecoin briefly fell 13 cents below the dollar. “It’s hard to imagine that wouldn’t be catastrophic.”

Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who researches financial regulation and technology, noted that some high-profile attempts to use the blockchain for purposes unrelated to cryptocurrency have failed. She expressed skepticism that the technology would fare better in the context of government grants, where bad outcomes could harm those who depend on HUD funding to survive.

“Blockchain technology has been around for 15 years. No one wants to use it. And so now we have an attempt to force the government to use it,” she said, with “the most vulnerable people” serving “as guinea pigs.”

Access to the system, called the HUD Enforcement Management System, or HEMS, is typically strictly limited because it contains medical records, financial files, documents that may list Social Security numbers and other private information. DOGE sought access, and HUD granted it last week, according to information reviewed by ProPublica and two officials familiar with the matter.

This is just the latest collection of sensitive personal information that DOGE has tried to access in recent weeks. It has also sought personal taxpayer data kept by the IRS and information on Social Security benefit recipients, and it attempted to enter the Treasury Department’s payment systems. DOGE’s stated mission is to modernize government technology and cut excessive or improper spending. The administration of President Donald Trump has argued that DOGE needs “direct access” to such systems to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.”

DOGE’s data-gathering moves at some agencies have sparked forceful pushback, including lawsuits over alleged privacy violations and opposition from career officials who have resigned or retired following access requests. Judges have temporarily blocked DOGE from gaining access to records at the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department. And, faced with resistance, DOGE agreed to view only anonymized taxpayer data at the IRS.

Few records in the HUD system are redacted or anonymized, and many contain deeply personal material about those who have alleged or been accused of housing discrimination. Domestic violence case files can list addresses to which survivors have relocated for their safety. Harassment cases can include detailed descriptions of sexual assaults. Disability cases can include detailed medical records. Lending discrimination files could feature credit reports and bank statements. The names of witnesses who offered information — in some cases anonymously — about landlords accused of discrimination are among the files as well.

HUD enforces numerous civil rights laws, including the Fair Housing Act and aspects of the Violence Against Women Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act. Such statutes collectively prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, disability and other characteristics.

HUD officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, voiced concern that DOGE’s access to HEMS could violate the privacy rights of discrimination victims and potentially put them at risk if their information is mishandled or leaked.

The episode is one of many roiling HUD, where the Trump administration is reportedly considering a 50% cut to the nearly 10,000-person workforce. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which combats housing discrimination, may see its roughly 500-person staff cut by as much as 76%, according to an unconfirmed projection circulating widely among HUD employees and viewed by ProPublica.

Civil liberties advocates expressed alarm about DOGE’s access to the HUD data, saying it may violate the Privacy Act. “It’s difficult to see why a system dedicated to civil rights complaints would have any impact whatsoever on a department looking for inefficiencies in governmental spending,” said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Venzke suggested DOGE may use HEMS data as a basis for scaling back housing discrimination enforcement. “There is deep concern that DOGE is not there to identify government inefficiencies, but rather to shutter programs that the administration disagrees with,” he said.

John Davisson, director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which is suing DOGE and other federal agencies and officials over DOGE’s access, contended that the department had gained access to HEMS and systems like it “under the false pretenses of identifying fraud and abuse, when what’s really going on is DOGE is trying to gain control over these databases to direct the activities of federal agencies.”

Spokespeople for HUD, the White House and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment (including a question to DOGE about what it plans to do with HEMS). After this article was published, Kasey Lovett, HUD’s head of public affairs, emailed ProPublica and stated, “to be clear, DOGE does not have access to HEMS.” Lovett declined to provide on-the-record evidence for her assertion.

HUD’s Fair Housing office receives tens of thousands of housing discrimination allegations or inquiries annually and investigates — or assigns to state or local agencies — around 8,000 of them each year. Those investigations can last months or years and lead to financial settlements, compliance monitoring and policy reforms by landlords, mortgage lenders, local zoning officials and homeowners associations.

Access to HEMS is usually limited to Fair Housing staffers, HUD attorneys and auditors, and state and local investigators. However, DOGE requested entry, and HUD granted read-only access last week to Michael Mirski, who has a HUD email address and whom officials at the housing agency have identified in internal discussions as being affiliated with DOGE. Mirski did not respond to a request for comment.