We learn a lot from the people who use our platform every day and enjoy collecting their feedback so we can use it to continue improving your experience with SALT. We spoke with our business client Justin Podhola, founder and CEO of Elite Mining Inc. — a company that generates mining capabilities through clean energy.

Tell us a bit about your background. How and when did you become involved in the blockchain/cryptocurrency space?
I’ve had quite a few years of trading experience overall. I started out trading on the US Stock Exchange over 10 years ago. Following that, I worked in real estate, building homes and flipping houses. I’ve always been a tech junkie, but I never really had a good place to put my knowledge and skills to work. Eventually one of my buddies asked me if I’d ever heard of Bitcoin, and while I was really interested in the technology, it didn’t make any sense to me at the time because I didn’t take the time to understand it. I started doing some research on it in 2016 and in early 2017 I decided to go ahead and take a chance on cryptocurrencies, and spent my life savings to start mining. I’m so glad I did because I’ve been so much better off because of it, and I’m able to contribute to an ecosystem that really resonates with me as a person.

Throughout the past couple of years, we’ve found there’s a strong need for proof of work and proof of stake, especially right now in the current markets for a lot of the smaller coins. They need more infrastructure built around them. Based on this research, I founded Elite Mining Inc. in late 2017. The business is profitable, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we’re able to provide security for blockchains. This market is ever-evolving and we’re looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Given your company focuses on clean mining, can you tell us about what that entails and why you decided to go that direction?
The current narrative around mining is that it’s going to harm the planet in the future — I’m really focused on not only squashing this notion, but on becoming the leader in clean and profitable mining. Bitcoin is sound money, and for our new cryptosphere to really lead the next generation of miners, we have to be focused on both reducing emissions and securing Dnet blockchains.

The sentiment is that being green with clean / renewable energy ends up losing you profits, but prior to founding the company, we conducted about six months’ worth of due diligence before we chose the state in which we wanted all of our facilities to be located. We wanted to be located in a geographic area that would allow us to scale into the hundreds of megawatts range and simultaneously be nearly 100% clean in our energy consumption for POW and POS (Proof of Work and Proof of Stake). Specifically and what ultimately made our decision is the fact that Washington State is the leading hydroelectricity-producing state in the nation, without a close second, but yet inherently has some of the lowest electricity rates in the entire world.

Washington State is inherently 91 to 92 percent all clean energy, which is the reason we chose it for our business. We looked at other states including New York, Montana, and Texas, but ultimately I was already living in the best state for what we wanted to do. The biggest pain point for renewable energy and mining is figuring out how to scale with it — we knew that operating out of Washington would allow us to do that. Having made this decision, we’re able to take advantage of some of the best electricity rates in the world and constantly deploy renewables on a distinct time scale within our operations to maintain the backbone of our operations, and at the same time lower our electricity costs in perpetuity.

Why did you take out a SALT loan and what made you choose SALT as your loan provider?
There are a few things that drew me to SALT. The first thing was the branding — I thought it was absolutely clean and genius. The SALT brand reminds me of Nike because it has a simple logo with strong meaning behind it. It’s a straightforward concept and given the colors and themes are good, I thought the company had a strong possibility of selling itself well. The next thing that caught my attention was SALT’s platform — it was extremely unique in the way the company built its tokenomics and membership benefits out of the SALT token. That really intrigued me, and as I conducted additional research, I learned early on that while I needed to cover the costs of electricity and of buying more rigs, there’d come a point where I’d want to try and keep as much Bitcoin and Ethereum as I could. I anticipated future appreciation, so I didn’t want to sell my assets. I figured that using SALT would put my business at an advantage because we could HODL all of our Bitcoin and Ethereum, use it as collateral, and generate additional income as a result of long-term appreciation. We don’t know where Bitcoin will be in two to three years, but by that point, if I hadn’t decided to do something like this now and use SALT to HODL my crypto, I would lose essentially 30–40 percent of my holding coin assets by having to sell them off to continue running my business. For me, using SALT was a no-brainer.

How is your SALT loan helping you accomplish your goals?
First of all, the SALT loan is enabling us to hold our assets, which is the most important attribute. Our most valuable assets are our Bitcoin and Ethereum, and while we also mine other coins, we’re able to sell into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Now that we’ve implemented SALT into our business model; we’re going to consistently contribute more to our BTC and ETH wallets on the SALT platform by adding more collateral over time. I can continue to add collateral as I go along, instead of paying bills directly by selling my Bitcoin and losing that future appreciation value. Then into the future, months down the road if I need cash, want to expand the company, ramp up operations for more rigs, or move to a new facility, I have the liquidity to be able to do so, yet I can still hold at least good chunk of my assets. To me that’s a powerful tool that’s going to add a lot to our company.

Would you consider a second loan with SALT?
Yes, and actually my second loan would likely be a personal loan. I’m bullish in the market right now and believe the market has leveled off for the most part, which triggers the trader signal in me for a green light to reduce margin calls and to be optimistic on long range trends for the value of my cryptocurrency.

What would you say to people who have cryptocurrency but may be skeptical about collateralizing it?
First of all, it’s important to do your due diligence, but I’d recommend going to SALT because they have a professional team and are an excellent company overall. They don’t waver in their terminology, and they’re good at communicating. Most importantly, they have excellent customer service — you can get ahold of them at any time.

There are a lot of scams out there, and there are a few lenders I would be careful of because they don’t have insurances in place if something were to happen to their lending solution. Knowing SALT has insurance is what gives me the confidence to take out a loan because at the end of the day I know they’re making sure to be extra cautious for their customers and that they have my best interests in mind. Additionally, security is number one, and I feel confident that SALT has an extremely secure platform, they have built their products on chain. SALT has developed their own tech stack, obtained their own licenses in the US and abroad, and they have an absolutely awesome SALT app on their phone that allows me in a blink of an eye to view and manage my assets via Smartphone 24/7/365. Through this ownership of these assets they have built, it allows them to really offer solutions to future clients that can grow in the foreseeable future. These aspects combined with their fast response time is why I would recommend them to someone looking for a crypto-backed loan. I’ve had experiences with other lenders and relatively speaking, they’ve been a little slow to get back to me. Given this is the 21st Century, I like things to be fast.

Are there any specific characteristics that you like about the SALT platform in particular?

1. I love the automated margin call system. It enables me to be hands-off, so I don’t have to worry about checking my loan every single day. I’m a very busy person, as I’m currently running two businesses and have a wife and kids. I don’t want to be checking my computer every day for my LTV, so to me the automated margin system alone is worth choosing SALT — time is money.
2. It’s extremely easy to apply for a loan. It took me just a few minutes to slide the scale over and figure out how much collateral I wanted to use and then two minutes to complete the application process. SALT responded quickly to me after I submitted the application.
3. The platform is simple. It’s clean, and there’s not a lot of jargon to comb through, which makes it significantly easier to go through the loan process.

In your experience, what’s something about our process that you think may prevent people from taking out a SALT loan?
One thing I think might be hard for people to understand and may prevent them from taking out a loan is that at this point, it takes a lot of collateral to back your loan — potentially more than the average person would expect. However, what’s important to understand is that it’s an emerging market and SALT has a certain level of responsibility to its investors and lenders, so overcollateralization of your loan is a necessary precaution for the time being. They’ve compensated for this recently by coming out with new, ridiculously good interest rates.

If you were going to choose the next collateral for SALT, what would you choose and why?
I would choose Dash — I think it’s a no-brainer. Dash has great market penetration right now — it has a strong following and is a no-nonsense coin. I also think Zcash would be another decent choice, as it is garnering quite a bit of adoption currently as well.