Podcast 143: Blake Cohen of SALT Lending
Even though bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are well down from their December highs there is still many people sitting on huge gains. If they want some liquidity on these crypto assets their only option up until this point has been to sell. Now, a new breed of lending platform is emerging to help them gain liquidity while continuing to hold their crypto assets.
My next guest on the Lend Academy Podcast is Blake Cohen who is the Co-founder and the Head of Business Development at SALT Lending. They are a brand new lending platform, having launched in December, in a brand new space: asset backed lending where the asset is a cryptocurrency.
In this podcast you will learn:
How Blake first got involved with blockchain and bitcoin.
The conversation that led to the founding of SALT Lending.
The outcome of his conversations with banks around accepting bitcoin as collateral.
How they discovered there would be demand for their proposed lending service.
Why they decided to sell discounted memberships instead of doing an ICO.
Why anybody who is holding cryptocurrency instantly understands their value proposition.
How much membership tokens, known as SALT tokens, cost.
The total amount of loan demand they have received to date.
How the process works when taking out a loan.
The loan products they are offering today.
How their margin calls work.
Why they do no credit checks on their borrowers.
How loans are getting funded today and their plans for the future here.
How the volatility in the price of cryptocurrencies has impacted their business.
The vision for the future of SALT lending.
This episode of the Lend Academy Podcast is sponsored by Nortridge Software: extremely flexible enterprise-grade loan servicing software.
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION SESSION NO. 143-BLAKE COHEN
Welcome to the Lend Academy Podcast, Episode No. 143. This is your host, Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy and Co-Founder of LendIt Fintech.
This episode of the Lend Academy podcast is sponsored by Nortridge Software, the platform behind some of the largest and most innovative lending companies in fintech. If you’ve gone to LendIt, chances are you’ve seen some of their customers. They chose Nortridge Software because it allowed them to push to market faster, provided the flexibility that other platforms don’t and enabled them to go from startup to IPO. Learn more at Nortridge.com.
Peter Renton: Today on the show, I’m delighted to welcome Blake Cohen, he is the Co-Founder and Head of Business Development at SALT Lending. Now SALT Lending are not your traditional type of lender, not your traditional type of online lender. They are a brand new type of lender that is emerging today which is basically taking cryptocurrency assets and making secured loans against those assets. They have a really unique model, we delve into their membership model in some depth, we talk about their underwriting, we talk about how they are funding these loans and what the future holds for cryptocurrency and for blockchain. It was a fascinating interview, hope you enjoy the show!
Welcome to the podcast, Blake!
Blake Cohen: Thank you, Peter.
Peter: Okay, so I like to get these things started by giving the listeners a little bit of background about yourself. Can you just tell us what you’ve done in your career to date?
Blake: Sure, so my family has been in the real estate business in Denver for three generations and my father also is Principal of a consulting company called, Signet Partners, and I worked in the family real estate business and back in 2012, started looking at emerging markets a
