Crypto Lending with Justin English

george grombacher 0:00
Come on life with this George G and the time is right welcome. Today’s guest is strong and powerful. Justin English. Justin, are you ready to do this?

Justin English 0:18
I’m ready.

george grombacher 0:19
All right, let’s go. Justin is the CEO of salt lending Inc. They are the first cryptocurrency lender in the crypto industry. Justin, excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal life smart about your work and why you do what you do.

Justin English 0:36
Personal life Well, Jerry, I mean, I have a family with four kids, so they keep me busy and happy. And yeah, I guess about work and why I do what I do. I think, Gosh, I don’t know, I think I probably I haven’t been life crisis, I guess in my last video. And, yeah, I woke up one day, and I realized that I just kind of made stuff that really didn’t make anyone’s lives better. And so I guess Yeah, aside from working at trying to enjoy my time with my family, I just I kind of just craved making some sort of impact, you know, and on other people in lives, and I guess society, and yeah,

george grombacher 1:19
well, I appreciate that. And those are all thoughts that hopefully, well, I don’t certainly want everybody to feel like they’re not having an impact. But I think it’s really, really valuable to be thinking about the impact that we are having the impact that we want to be having. So you go from feeling like yeah, I’m having success and be productive. But I’d like to do more to starting something that didn’t exist. So that’s that’s, that’s no small feat.

Justin English 1:47
Yeah, I mean, I, I guess I’ve been a serial entrepreneur, really. I started two businesses in my life. I had a stint in private equity, and then in venture capital, so I’ve always kind of been on that. That end of things, I guess, just in creating. So yeah, I mean, I’ve just that’s kind of just what I’ve been drawn to.

george grombacher 2:07
Got it. Fair enough. And in terms of crypto, when did you become interested in that?

Justin English 2:14
I, you know, I it was it was actually it wasn’t super early, you know, I was in 2016. And it’s kind of still in my last business. And I, we were, we were getting ready to exit. And so I started kind of just getting into angel investing. And then I ended up you know, kind of forming more formal funding around it. But yeah, I did probably 15 placements there. And I yeah, I don’t know, I just as fascinating, the technology is fascinating. And so it was just, you know, the kind of what could it do? How could it make an impact? And if there was just, yeah, your mind can run wild with something like this. And so yeah, we just kept digging in and digging in and digging in. And then yeah, go down the proverbial rabbit hole, I guess.

george grombacher 3:03
Right. And I imagine you probably explored different opportunities and different things that you might be interested in. How did you actually settle on lending? And maybe tell us a little bit about what that really means?

Justin English 3:17
Yeah, so in this world, I was actually, I guess, an investor and a customer both. And so I’ve always wanted to kind of use the products but you know, salt. So it wasn’t original founder, but did end up finding myself in a seat, obviously. And I think, yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I think what spoke to me about this, in particular is, you know, there’s, it was a good platform that it had an ability to make, you know, did I guess maybe it’ll just what I said earlier, just to really make an impact on in, like, the real world on traditional lives. And so we were and I just kind of saw that running around inside the business when I looked at it and invested in it, and, you know, was a customer of it. And so, yeah, there’s just, there’s a lot of potential there. And so, yeah, Duggan.

george grombacher 4:12
Thanks. So tell me, tell me about the impact that that, that you’re making, maybe some examples.

Justin English 4:19
Um, you know, I think we’re trying to really empower, I guess the goal is to really just hopefully empower the individual to conquered, you know, these, you know, the burden of wealth and the burden of debt and credit and, and so, they Yeah, I think our salts internal goal is to build tools around. Yeah, I guess making products that they don’t that a user doesn’t necessarily have to change something about themselves. You know, there’s tons of information out there and podcasts and books sit and hold news networks around trying to teach about investing and wealth. And and it’s just, it’s confusing and hard. And it takes discipline and a long term view perspective. And I think it’s unreasonable to probably think that, you know, we’re going to release a product or anyone could to that required user an individual to make that change, you know, make a perspective shift to change who they are, how they behave in the world. And so our goal really underlying is to build something that fits inside their life that kind of is this, I guess, neutral nudge of sorts that really has that perspective for them, I guess, in a way where they don’t have to change the product is the one carrying the perspective and giving them benefit to the, to these tools that are typically only available for the wealthy currently?

george grombacher 6:00
Nice. Well, that certainly does make sense. You look around and say, okay, you know, it’s hard getting human beings to change, you know, it’d be good if they could have the benefits without really having to change behaviors. So I appreciate that. Yeah,

Justin English 6:16
I mean, it is it’s not a Yeah, it’s not an easy view of the world is, yeah, we tried to take the anthropological, I guess, look at things where, you know, just, but I think it’s just impossible to change people’s behaviors. Through product, it’s just our job is product makers is to integrate with their, you know, the human experience kind of thing.

george grombacher 6:43
Nice. Okay. So, somebody has an existing portfolio of crypto assets, cryptocurrency, and instead of selling it, they come to you, and you make it liquid and lend based on that, how does it work?

Justin English 7:01
Yeah, I mean, that’s the underlying thought around the product is, you know, and it’s, it really follows that same kind of wealth management. Just, even in traditional finance, you know, you have your high net worth clients that, you know, have these portfolios and, you know, private banking and in, that’s you, there’s all of these wealth management tools that you know, where you get lines of credit on it, and it’s super cheap capital, and, you know, I guess access to investments that others really don’t get access to. And so a lot of those types of things we’re trying to kind of democratize and give, you know, that the vision is to kind of give access to everyone, and that that’s a, you know, kind of an underlying fundamental, you know, Blockchain in general. And, you know, it’s a technology and it’s available for everyone. And so we’re using that, as, you know, building on top of that, to try and try and accomplish giving people access to this type of wealth tool and wealth building throughout the future. But yeah, I mean, answer your question. There’s a lot of the we can take this in a lot of different directions. But yes, the underlying thing is, you have wealth. And you can use that wealth in the real world either by spending on it by compounding investing over time. But the trick is to not you to not spend it, you know, it’s the compound interest that you learned in school, it’s just, if you spend it, it’s expensive in the future, you know, where you’re compounding it over 2030 years that you know, a 10% interest rate. Yeah, the trick is to leave it and let it grow.

george grombacher 8:51
Got it nice. So somebody comes to you, and let’s say I have a portfolio of worth 250,000 Bitcoin 20 $50,000 worth of of Bitcoin. And I say everything you just sound sound, everything you just said, sounds good to me, I’d rather leave that there. But how can I spend, you spend, how can I invest without actually touching the actual coins?

Justin English 9:21
Right, so there’s, I guess, two different ways. One, you have you have a guess, over history, you have an asset that has been growing over time. And so you want to leave it growing over time. And so you would either take a loan out so we have a term loan product, and whether that is for the purchase of a car or the purchase of you know, financing, you know, maybe a down payment for a home. Our newer products are for you know, I guess just from a credit card standpoint, is to use that as a credit tool we issue you know, Fundamentally, we issue credit based on the amount of, you know, the 250,000 Worth that you have in your portfolio. Other than, you know, your KYC, AML, you know, Are you a terrorist kind of questioning? You know, we issue credit because you have assets. And that’s kind of fundamentally what it comes down to. So we can put a payment rail like a credit card on top of that, where, you know, you’re available to spend depends on how much wealth you have in the background. And so we can, you, I guess, kind of give those, like I said earlier, kind of these neutral nudges around, being able to responsibly save, you know, where that credit card has, it’s, the only reason why it would work is if you save, because you get spending, you know, issued on top of those savings. So it’s more of a, it’s more of a shift in mindset where the product doesn’t work, if you go into debt, you know, in net debt terms, where you save, and then you can kind of spend as your wealth grows in your, you know, I guess your quality of life in general, also, kind of all that also grows over time, as well as your wealth goes.

george grombacher 11:19
Down it nice. All right, cool. So how does your I’m not going to find the right term here, but how, how does your underwriting work? Versus and how does that differ from traditional lending, due to the, for lack of a better term, the fluctuations in price, or potential fluctuations in price of some of these coins.

Justin English 11:46
So I mean, I think that’s kind of the nuance around the actual product, and what we learned just by having users, you know, we and us, obviously, as well, using the product, so it’s more, there is volatility. And we have developed some tools recently, so we have a stabilization product that we released that, I guess essentially acts as a stoploss, it kind of pauses time, you know, if you had that same 250,000, and you had a, I guess, I don’t know, $200,000 loan outstanding that 250,000, you know, in Bitcoin can obviously drop, we would, you know, at a certain point in time above 200,000, or whatever you’ve borrowed, we would flip into a stable asset, you know, like, any stable coin that’s out there. But once we do that, you know, there’s, there’s kind of this this world where you have some time to react to it, the loan still outstanding, you know, we don’t close it out, you can still pay your interest and, and you have the choice to either pay the loan off, or you have the choice to deposit some more assets, get yourself out of this margin call, and then flip those assets back into, you know, a more volatile asset that you feel like you want to hold like Bitcoin or ether, or something of the nature.

george grombacher 13:13
Nice. It’s fascinating, just the innovations that are taking place, and the choices and directions that company are, are making decisions on so what do you do? Aside from the things we’ve been talking about? What What else is you read the tea leaves, and you try to develop new products? What do you see on the horizon?

Justin English 13:40
Um, I mean, I think a lot of, you know, for our own products, it’s more, you know, we’re we just released an embedded lending service where we’re taking the technology stack, and we’re, I guess, embedding it in more of that like point of purchase. So when you engage in a car loan, or you engage in, you know, potentially in anything else, where that you look at, you know, or you’re looking at a mortgage, or you’re looking at these various things, even, you know, your whole Buy now pay later space, that, you know, we are trying to develop tools for, you know, the service providers that you interact with every day kind of thing. And so we would be there to say, you know, to enable digital assets to be used. Yep, just in the real world for all those different kind of use cases. or additional kind of, you know, I guess, desire is to really figure out a way to simplify some of these more complex ideas and, and kind of put them in the hands of the user where, like, we were talking about stabilization and that it’s, you know, a stop loss isn’t particularly an overly complicated con set, but it’s you know, in, especially in the world of traders, but not everyone’s a trader, we’re trying to put this in the hands of just people who don’t haven’t traded in their entire lives. And so it’s, it’s the hurdle there is to make that simplified concept. And, and to try and develop more of those tools to kind of put the user in control of how they manage their wealth. And, and so that’s really what it comes down to is taking something that’s very complex, like crypto and scary and making it as simple as possible. And getting it to the places that people normally interact in everyday life, like the dealership and trying to buy a car, or like, you know, buying something online that might cost something more than you have. And you might need, you know, a small loan to finance it up front. But yeah, it’s something like that, I guess it’s kind of what we’re looking at. Love it.

george grombacher 16:07
That’s a, that is the trick. So how long does it take you? And it probably depends to sort of workshop these and focus group them, and there’s never going to be a perfect time. Right? It’s never going to be totally ready. Just gotta get it out there in people’s hands.

Justin English 16:24
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a balance of yeah, just being trying to create something that is of quality, you know, we’re still in the early adopter stage. You know, we’re trying to get these into people’s hands who liked to play with it, you know, there is a huge ecosystem of, you know, I guess, crypto users, and you know, in the whole defy space, and there are a lot of people that are playing around and experimenting with these types of things. And so we’re trying to take that next step and get it into like this real world and try and yet see what it feels like to go have a credit card that’s backed by a volatile asset, and you’re sitting at dinner, and you need to be comfortable is completely 100% secure that, you know, when you swipe that card, you’re going to have the money available. And that, you know, the volatile nature of the assets that you’re holding doesn’t affect that, you know, being able to pay for dinner.

george grombacher 17:23
Well, Justin, people are ready for that difference making tip, what do you have for them?

Justin English 17:28
Um, you know, I guess you know, I guess I always try to live by the saying of you know, and my wife says, it’s up to me all the time to is just, we rise by lifting others. We say it to our kids all the time. And my hope is that others do as well.

george grombacher 17:48
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets caught. Justin, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? And how can they engage with salt lending?

Justin English 17:58
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

george grombacher 18:00
One of the websites best best place for people to find you.

Justin English 18:04
You know, just salt lending.com is a great place. It’s easy to navigate. There’s education stuff on there, you can interact with products, get on waitlist for new products. Yeah, pretty much socials on there. You can kind of branch out and all the social channels. So yeah, it’s a good place.

george grombacher 18:22
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show just a new appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to salt lending.com And check out other great resources and stay on top of everything else that’s coming out. Because I’m confident that more and more things will be coming out all the time. So thanks again, Justin.

Justin English 18:43
Thanks again. Appreciate it.

george grombacher 18:45
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai