Bitcoin-Backed Loans Are Leading the Credit Revolution | SALT Lending

Welcome back to the Bitcoin Magazine Newses powered by Mara. I'm Jeff Heapner. This is Teemo Lamar. Down at the end is Sean Hagen. And today we are joined by Mr. Shawn Owen from Salt Lending. Sean, welcome. >> Hey, it's good to be here. >> I'm glad you're here, man. >> Absolutely. >> Seeing Senator Lumis and the the way she personifies the the the ethos of Bitcoin. She I buy it. You know what I mean? I really buy it. I believe her and I believe her sincerity at pushing not just the Clarity Act and the her love of Bitcoin, but I feel like she really wants to spread it to everybody. And I think it's really important that we diversify, you know, who we're talking to, right? Like like Sean, just broadening the the tent, not just finance guys and not just, you know, crazy sovereign individuals, right? It's it's about bringing everybody in and showing them how this is going to affect their lives. >> Yeah, 100%. And look, the finance bros certainly were not here first, right? That was a big deal when they showed up a couple cycles ago. So, uh, yeah, look, I mean, you know, we we've heard about how it's cipher punk money at its core and at its roots, and I think we're going to hear more about that today. >> Yeah. And you mentioning Senator Lumis and her story of getting into Bitcoin and and how the traditional financial system did not serve her and Bitcoin being that solution that nothing else can is incredibly important and I think tells a story that people who have an idea about Bitcoin but haven't gone down the rabbit hole can actually latch on to. >> Well, and they take for granted their their access to banking. and when they start to hear stories where people have different avenues into Bitcoin because of their lack of access and and and Sean, I'm sure that's something that you see a lot, right? You've get a lot of people who who traditionally can't find lending that are coming to seek your services. >> You know, that's definitely becoming less and less of a thing, but it was pretty interesting just to see even that that was um Eric Trump, I think, was the one who had really said that was what turned him on to that. And that's definitely a true reality is that Bitcoin has been underserved, underbanked for quite some time. and that there was a whole period of time where we were all, you know, assumed guilty until proven anything else. Um, and that seems to be fading a lot away and the more that we get clarity, the better off we are for that. Um, but Lumis was the one that really, I think, came to the conclusion that we all do eventually, which is zero is the wrong number. And there's a much bigger risk to not having any Bitcoin, especially the whole topic of strategic Bitcoin reserves, which I think is one that hasn't been in the news cycle as much recently, but is just as relevant and impression all the time because what is it to own Bitcoin? That is your reserve. That is your hope. That is your future. That is the savings account of what you value most. And once somebody realizes, oh, which I think we all have, I'm late. I need we I need some more of this, right? And the first thing you do is start kind of about facing and heading towards where do I get more of this and what do I do? And then that leads you down eventually. Um, you know, banking services become relevant. Uh, I think it's the quote I usually use is that only 33% of verified Bitcoin owners uh have borrowed or thought about doing anything else other than just saving it. So that's quite a steep curve and that tells you 77% of the verified which I think is a small number is still just at phase one, >> right? And phase two and three always come. So there's this learning journey that it feels like it it's really great to see everybody on. >> Well, and you touched on the learning journey, right? There's there's this danger of people all of a sudden coming to the realization they can borrow against this and then they they they fall into this leverage trap. And so I'm assuming from your worldview you understand the value of education of what they're putting you know what one what they're holding and then what they're putting up to to take money out you know to lend against and how do you go about educating people to do that safely. >> So transparency and information disclosure is of course key like that's the the principle number one uh first principle is that you need to be informed before you can make consent of anything really but with finance that's very important. Um, and so just good information and disclosure, being transparent and um, doing the best you can, which again is one of the things I think we all love about Bitcoin is that it has this global central decentral uh, transparent nature to it and attempting to get additional or you know, let's say traditional finance to catch up to that's hard, but it there's a path towards that. And so it starts with good information. It also is usually then something that you can look at and say, well, what are you really looking to serve? if you are looking for just long-term savings, which is what Bitcoin brings back to the equation, is that you don't actually need to be speculating, going down the risk curve and gambling um as much as you think if you are in something that captures and saves your value versus something that's a hot potato that you got to get into the trash can as fast as possible. Yeah. >> Right. Um so that that education becomes easier once somebody just realize there's no um give me money, I double. There's no you have to go, you know, throw this on black. Let's just save first and then actually then using credit for a life event becomes much easier because you're not looking to go lever or speculate. You're looking just to use it as needed which is really what credit should be. Plus debt becomes not a bad word if you're thinking about it differently. If you're leveraging against an asset that exists that's real versus printing money to create a promise that cannot be repaid like it's a different terminology. So we don't really have words for that. credit, maybe digital credit is the right way to think about it, the way Sailor prescribed, but debt really is kind of a different meaning altogether. >> And are you seeing some of your customers have that aha moment? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. >> I mean, that's got to be kind of exciting, right? Because part of this journey for people is is that personal responsibility that Bitcoin requires and all of a sudden you see them click, ah, I get it because I had that, right? I had a moment where I'm like, "Oh, this all makes sense because I thought it was magic internet money and I was just going to go I was going to be rich, right?" And all of a sudden, you're like, "Wait, no, I understand the purpose of this." And then when you add those complexities, it's got to be satisfying to see that come to fruition. >> I I love seeing the individual sovereignty come from small family offices and the small families in general. You know, I think the strategic reserves at the personal level is where it starts. You know, it's amazing to see great companies coming along and sovereigns that are buying Bitcoin and put on a balance sheet, but it's also just one indicator of where we're heading, right? I think the better outcome is when you realize that there's millions and millions of Americans now that own Bitcoin and own crypto and hopefully more Bitcoin than crypto. Yeah. But, uh, the ability to just watch that that that's real adoption, right? Don't pay attention to price. think about just how are we making the system function better for us for a better future and the price will take care of itself. >> You know, I'm going to come to you with this with Teemo. Um we he said strategic reserve twice and it that also came up yesterday, right? Were you did you hear Patrick Wit's comments on that? Do you have any feelings on that because I thought that was interesting because it's coming back into the news cycle. I I think like like Sean mentioned, I think before we get excited about a government or central bank adopting Bitcoin, you have to take care of home and making sure the individual is having their own reserve. And if you take care of that, everything else is gravy. And so I think it's hard for me to get too excited about governments. Now, I will say that you'd probably rather have your government aligned with you incentive wise. That's the game theory of Bitcoin that people who don't necessarily see eye to eye on things can actually be pulling in the same direction if they have both adopted Bitcoin. And so money for enemies kind of comes into play with with that sense. So it's it's hard to get excited personally about it, but I I understand that it probably benefits the US the US government actually having a crypto or Bitcoin reserve. >> But you make an interesting point, too, and and I like that we're using the same terminology. There's a personal family reserve, you know, and a governmental level. And those things, like you said, if they're pulling in the same direction, we can all get to that place that we're looking to go. I mean, >> I mean, Sean, you're young. Someday you're going to have a family. I think you said you wanted to have about 10 kids. You were looking forward to that. 12 would be better. >> Yeah. Exactly. So, you're going to need that personal family strategic reserve. How are you going to go about getting that? >> Yeah. Look, I mean, I I think when you when you examine the financial vertical of your life, right, you want assets that are easy to lend against, uh, and also you're looking at assets that you want to purchase when you're taking out credit from a lender, right? And I think that's the aha moment that Sean was actually touching on, right? Is that unlike other collateral perhaps that might depreciate on a on a normative schedule or over time there might be new supply of this whether it's equipment being manufactured or gold being mined. uh it depreciates in value over the term of of the note typically, right? And so Bitcoin uh in contrast to that will actually uh likely go up in value as it's scarce and fixed and whatnot has all these properties as superior collateral. So I'm trying to position in a way where I can I can utilize leverage but out of a position of strength and the best possible asset for that is Bitcoin. So, I think that's the true aha moment is, you know, you don't just want to take out collateral to get Bitcoin sometimes, maybe via like STRC, for example, which works great, but sometimes you want to put your Bitcoin to work as well, depending on kind of the the market cycle at the time and and the position of kind of the macro environment. And uh you know, I was talking to Sean before we went on camera and I think it's it's an interesting use case that he's seeing some of his businesses, some of his small shops actually use that Bitcoin as a way to uh refinancialize the idea of what their strategic reserve looks like by parking that Bitcoin with salt and then gaining some capital back to put towards their operations. Hands.