Imagine that you bought one bitcoin in January 2017 for the price of 985 dollars. Then, during the year, you watched very pleased an astronomical growth of this token value. At the end of November, to your surprise, your bitcoin costs nothing less than 10 thousand dollars! Now you can even buy a car with your bitcoin. So, what do you do? To you not to run the risk of seeing the token value to decrease, you sell your bitcoin and buy the car you want. Less than 15 days after, you discover that bitcoin value is actually 17.5 thousand dollars and you could have bought a motorcycle too, have took a trip (not one, but lots) or reformed the house, for example. What if I say to you that there is a way to you to buy a car, or anything else, with the money of your bitcoins, or any other tokens, without needing to sell them? The SALT platform has revealed itself as the right place to it.
What is SALT and what is its goal?
SALT (Secured Automated Lending Technology) is a still in deployment platform, created in September 2017, which promises to work like a bank system by offering to its members, soon, even credit card service. If you go to any bank today and ask for a lending of 10 thousand dollars, you will pass through a credit analysis process. Depending on your history, your income and other factors, it is possible that you do not get the money released. SALT makes this process easier by allowing you to use as a collateral your blockchain assets, without credit analysis or payment of previous taxes. Thus if you have 10 thousand dollars in bitcoins, you can become a member, send your bitcoins as a collateral (without selling them, therefore) and receive in your bank account 10 thousand dollars. If next month the bitcoin value increase, you can simply pay the loan (with the interest) and have your bitcoins returned. What would happen, therefore, if instead of having sold for 10 thousand dollars your bitcoin you had borrowed the 10 thousand dollars from SALT? You would have bought the car in anyway, but in the next month, when bitcoin value increase, you could pay your bill and have your bitcoin returned shortly thereafter, without losing those 7.5 thousand dollars. According to Forbes, SALT is the first lending platform to support loans collateralized by blockchain assets. This platform main purpose is to allow individuals and enterprises to enjoy their assets without needing to sell them, but SALT is a token too and you will use it in two moments, basically: to buy your membership in the platform and to pay your loans. Namely, you pay your loan using the SALT token, which has the value of US$25 in the platform. By using SALT, you make its value to increase, what is maybe the platform developers’ main goal.
How does the platform work and some technical details
You must first sign in to begin to use SALT. Next, you will have to choose one of the three plans. The first one, membership or base, offers you lending of up to 10 thousand dollars and requires an annual purchase of one SALT. The second one, premier, lends you up to 100 thousand dollars and requires an annual purchase of 10 SALTs. The third one, on the other hand, enable a lending of over 1 million dollars and requires an annual purchase of 100 SALTs. After choosing your plan, you can send your bitcoin or ethereum (or any other token supported by the platform) as collateral. Then a lender will lend you the money by depositing it in your bank account. After, you will make periodical payments, monthly in general, depending on the terms, to your lender. Upon repayment of the loan, you receive back your assets. The interest rates are very competitive, varying from 10% to 15%. Now a days, SALT token is sold in some exchanges like Binance, Bittrex and Huobi for the price of 3.80 dollars. So, if this token value increase to US$25, it’s an interesting investment. The total number of SALT tokens existing in the market is 120 million and the bigger value this token reached until now was US$15.35 in December 2017.
Market position and competitors
source:https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/salt/
The SALT token is at the 84th place in the tokens ranking presented by investing.com, having a market cap of 208.55 million dollars. The platform has as main competitors Unchained Capital, EthLend and Othera, also lending platforms that support as collateral blockchain assets.
Conclusion
If you are interested in asking for a lending but you do not want to pass through an extremely bureaucratic credit analysis in a traditional bank, I recommend you to try SALT. The biggest benefit is that you don