"SALT lets you leverage your blockchain assets to secure cash loans. We make it easy to get money without having to sell your favorite investment." [3]
Cryptocurrencies as a commodity asset class
Salt promotes a buy n' hodl strategy for investors of all sizes who are looking into starting, expanding, or saving a business. This also includes all form of traders, in all asset classes, as well as large scale institutions.
With Salt's goal to enable Blockchain-backed loans using multiple cryptocurrencies to be used as collateral, will give investors the option of holding a diversified cryptocurrency portfolio. They can do this while using the loans from Salt to either perform speculative day-trading in the cryptocurrency market, or pay the electricity bills associated with Blockchain mining. These is just two crypto-related options, of course you are free to use these loans on any business endeavor.
You could in theory use your Bitcoin to take out a loan, then using that loan to purchase a low market cap cryptocurrency with Masternode hosting capabilities. You would then use the returns from the Masternode rewards to pay the interest on the loan, in the cases of a bull market you would be able to get an increased exposure in the cryptocurrency market.
My prediction is that this type of Salt loans will be far more used than purchasing Blockchain mining rigs, or maintaining them. This is simply due to the fact that anyone with some cryptocurrencies, basic computer knowledge, and awareness of external cloud Masternode hosting services available, will be able to become small business owners in the cryptocurrency ecosystem in times of bull-markets.
I do feel forced to also inform you that this coin has two sides, in times of bear-markets, your losses could potentially multiply. Remember also that the collateral you put up for the margin that Salt loans require could decrease so much in value that they will have to give you a margin call, meaning you will either have to deposit more cryptocurrency to back your loan, or close out the loan and take the loss.
Therefore, if you are pursuing this opportunity, never use your entire position as collateral for a loan. Always keep an additional margin in your wallet as a worst case scenario solution. Getting out of the cryptocurrency market at the wrong time can be a very costly endeavor, remember, buy the dips and HODL.
I would strongly advice that NOBODY use this service for ICO investing. When ICO investing, you lock up a portion of your funds for an unknown period. In the above mentioned event that the markets drops, and you might actually be forced to liquidate your position to close the Salt loan. If this happens during a period when you have your money locked up in a ICO, you will have to add additional capital to your cryptocurrency portfolio.
In a broader perspective, Salt will enable more businesses outside the crypto-sphere, to be started using Blockchain-backed loans. This brings the cryptocurrency market into the realm of commodity asset class backed loans, which will make it equivalent to lending against Gold. The quality which makes Gold attractive to use for commodity-backed loans, is because Gold is scarce, and has for a long time held free market intrinsic value. Meaning that the market's collective and average relationship to Gold, and our collective opinion of its long-term value, is what makes gold a store of value with the attributes of an asset with intrinsic value.
The same goes for many cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It is global, meaning there is an formed opinion of the commodity value of Bitcoin in most countries on earth. It is also scarce, meaning there is a limited supply. This is also why the price has risen so much. The larger exposure Bitcoin get, the more Blockchain believers join the legion. With a fixed supply, and growing demand, the price is bound to rise. With the entire world just now starting to learn about this revolutionary technology, and understanding why it's Cash 2.0, we have merely glimmered into the future of what is about to come.
The world of banking is designed in a way which makes them able to lend out more money than they actually hold, about ten times as much to be more specific, this was also one of the factors which resulted in the financial crisis of 2008 (to be fair, the sub-prime mortgage lending in combination with repackaging of sub-prime mortgages into collateralized debt obligations which were given AAA rating, when in reality the bundles of sub-prime loans where below BBB, with crappy FISA scores, were the primary cause of the economic collapse). The banks ability to lend above their own means was however the reason that they the government in the end had to bail out the banks, instead of taking the side of the general public, this in order to prevent a total global economic collapse. This type of leveraged lending capabilities is called a fractional reserve system. The fractional reserve system is based on the premise that it's unreasonable to assume that everyone should take out all their money at once. Therefore an economic opportunity arises from capital just sitting in an account. The banks use YOUR money to pursue this opportunity, and earn FORTUNES on it, and leave you with 0% commission for allowing them to lend out your money. Even worse, you pay an annual fee to the bank for "securely managing your assets". It does not have to be that way, we can even keep the fucking fractional reserve system, just distribute the equally among owners of lent capital. And that ladies and gents, is what Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) gives us. Shared economy, shared profit, trust, transparency, privacy and freedom. The only thing you need to do is cast your vote on Blockchain by downloading a Bitcoin (or some other crypto) wallet, and start using it.
The value and rate of Blockchain adoption happens with increased purchasing power, which comes from institutional adoption of crypto payment methods, and from the number of transactions made over the network. Metcalfe's law is a tool for measuring the value of a network using network effect valuation. The idea that for every new user, additional value is added to the network. This is to date the best way to account for price action seen in Bitcoin, but don't assume this to be an accurate measurement tool. It has by no means accounted for the last 6 months of price development seen in Bitcoin. So what you can do to promote this is simply downloading a wallet, and purchase a cryptocurrency of your choosing.
In a Blockchain-backed loan economy, every single loan being lent will have a sufficient value + a margin, held in the cryptocurrency behind the Blockchain-backed loan. These loans will be paid out in US dollars, meaning you will have access to a currency with great purchasing power around the world (yes, I know, we want that to change, and it is changing, but meanwhile this is a pretty great fucking opportunity).
Cryptocurrency as a foreign currency asset class
Now looking at the cryptocurrency market from a different asset class perspective, as a foreign currency. Now all of a sudden we have an asset class which examines characteristics of a commodity asset class which can be used a collateral in loans, but this currency/commodity can also be used as collateral while appreciating in value due to growing purchasing power, and therefore increased demand.
You can now hold an asset with appreciating purchasing power in comparison to other currencies, while gaining the ability to use it as a commodity collateral backed loan to feed to growing market for small business owners. This will have a HUGE impact, and I cannot understand why not more people are talking about it. We are gaining the best from two worlds of asset classes.
The ability to use more than only Bitcoin as collateral also promotes the adoption of more cryptocurrencies in general. For cryptocurrencies with smaller market caps, to be viable as collateral will have even greater implications for the speed at which Blockchain related businesses will pop up. I would not be surprised if we in a nearby future will also be able to apply for Blockchain-backed loans using an index of multiple cryptocurrencies to decrease the needed margin collateral because of the more stabilized price action, resulting in more reliable margin call calculations by Salt.
And as if that wasn't enough, this story broke:
[1]
[2]
400,000 million gamers will now be able to learn about economics through gaming, but MUCH more importantly, gamers all around the world will now be able to use the ingame value they have acquired over many years and transform it into money with real-world purchasing power. And when you add the Salt + Wax Blockchain-backed loan to that mix, these gamers will be able to start small businesses using their ingame value tokens, since they are now backed by a cryptocurrency with market consensuses in valuation against fiat currency, and available exchanges to transform ingame value tokens into cash.
Streamers, professional gamers, and many more, will be able to expand their small businesses, or market themselves, or earn additional revenue from pre-existing access or knowledge of their gaming area of choice. These Wax backed loans can really make a difference for the large population who are both active in the cryptocurrency space and the gaming scene, as I imagine many of you are.
Back to Salt, and why its the most undervalued cryptocurrency on the market. Salt is available on several major exchanges including Binance, Bittrex, Huobi, Liqui, EtherDelta, and OKEx. They have a experienced and dedicated team, with experienced leader Shawn Owen as CEO [6]. We also find the CEO of Shapeshift.io, Erik Voorhees [7] as advisor to Salt. Erik Voorhees is well known in the Blockchain community, and a trusted opinion in the community.
The current cryptocurrency market climate with billion dollar valuations being seen in yet unfinished products, and lacking community behind them. Comparing these cryptocurrencies with Salt, and its already launched and available product does not translate into market cap valuations when watching coinmarketcap. As of today (2018-01-08), Salt has a total market cap of $686 202 861 USD. Their product has already attracted major attention, and more than a million dollars in loans where applied for within the first days, a number which they expect will tenfold during January.
I expect to see Salt pass the billion dollar market cap within a couple of weeks, and then move on to bigger highs. Their apparent work with securing partnerships with Wax and many more, inspires a lot of confidence in SALT's future growth [8]. Just to finish of this post, here is some community numbers for Salt
Telegram - 6,305 members
Twitter - 30,500 followers
Facebook - 9841 followers
[3] https://www.saltlending.com/
Reddit/ Salt Trader
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/SaltTrader/
Reddit/ Salt Lending
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/SALTLending/
Reddit/ Salt Coin
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/SaltCoin/
Bitcointalk / Salt community membership
[4] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2051305.0
Salt CEO, Shawn Owen
[6] https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-owen-052a6153/
Shapeshift CEO, Erik Voorhees
[7] https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikvoorhees/
Salt partnership with cryptocurrency Loki
[8] https://medium.com/@John_Loci/loci-partners-with-salt-lending-d82d1617f1b
Salt partnership with SBM group, one of the largest banking & financial services institutions with clients in Africa & Asia
[8] https://coinspectator.com/news/86621/the-sbm-group-and-salt-technology-enter-exploratory-partnership-to-collateralize-blockchain-assets
Salt intro video
[5]
