What to Expect When the Value of Your Collateral is on the Decline

Your collateral is what protects your loan. It’s why SALT doesn’t need to perform income checks or credit checks when issuing a loan. But cryptocurrencies are volatile, so what happens if the value of your collateral begins to fall? Declining collateral value negatively impacts your Loan-to Value-Ratio (LTV) — that is the amount of outstanding principal still owed on your loan divided by the value of your underlying collateral: Outstanding Principal / Value of Collateral. LTV is the key metric SALT uses to determine the health of a loan. The lower the LTV, the healthier the loan. If the value of your collateral goes up, your LTV goes down. If the value of your collateral goes down, your LTV goes up. It’s that simple.

Choosing your Loan-to-Value (LTV)

When choosing your LTV, the most important consideration is your risk tolerance. We offer starting LTV options of 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70%. If you go with a 30% LTV, you are choosing the safest level of overcollateralization, or cushion. With a 70% LTV, you won’t have to deposit as much crypto to begin with, but you’ll have the least amount of cushion. The higher the starting LTV, the higher the risk. Choose the LTV option that’s right for you.

What can you expect from us when your collateral declines in value and your LTV begins to rise? Lots of notifications.

If your collateral continues to go down in value, your LTV will steadily climb. As your LTV crosses certain critical thresholds (75%, 83%, 88%, and 90.91% as of the time of this writing) SALT’s robust monitoring and notification technology kicks in to help protect your loan.

At 75%, we give you a heads up, letting you know to monitor your loan more closely given your collateral is declining in value.
At 83%, we inform you that things are not looking so good, and you may want to consider paying back some of the loan or depositing extra collateral.
At 88%, we issue a final warning to let you know that if you don’t pay back some of the loan or deposit more collateral, you run a high risk of having your assets liquidated.
At 90.91%, SALT is contractually obligated to liquidate a portion of your collateral in order to prevent the lender from losing their investment.

After all, lenders wouldn’t be willing to lend the money in the first place if SALT couldn’t guarantee its safety.

How you respond to a rising LTV and warning notifications is up to you. Here are the current options:

Pay back a portion of the loan — You can make a payment in USD via wire or ACH, or you can make a payment using a stablecoin instead. SALT currently accepts PAX, USDC and TUSD. With this option, you are choosing to lower your LTV by paying down the principal on your loan.
Deposit more collateral — You can quickly and easily deposit additional collateral (it can be the same collateral your loan is backed by or a different collateral type that we offer). With this option, you are choosing to lower your LTV by increasing the total value of the underlying collateral.
Do nothing — You can choose to ignore the warnings. If your collateral continues to decline in value, SALT may eventually be forced to liquidate a portion of your assets on the open market.

We’ve done the math to show you how each of these options impacts your assets, remaining principal, and required payment.

Based on the above calculations, if you want to avoid any loss of assets, it’s best to respond as quickly as possible with options one or two. Otherwise, option three is available if that’s what you prefer. Either way it’s important to think through the options and know where you stand before your LTV crosses our liquidation threshold.

Keep tabs on your loan health from anywhere via the real-time LTV widget on your web dashboard or by logging into your account through our mobile app.

It’s on us to monitor your loan health and keep you updated. It’s on you to take action (or not take action) when your collateral value is on the decline.

Loan to Value (LTV) Explained

When you apply for a traditional loan, the lender uses your credit score, as reported by third-party credit agencies, to determine your credit worthiness or financial “reputation.” The higher your credit score, the lower the risk. To offset your credit score or in some cases even completely remove it from the equation, you can apply for an asset-backed loan. With this type of loan, you can offer up your assets — anything from your house or car to your stock portfolio — as collateral to act as “insurance” for the lender. In asset-backed lending, borrowers typically secure loans for an amount that’s less than the total value of the collateral.

The measurement of the balance of the loan relative to the value of the collateral asset is represented as loan-to-value or LTV. For example, you may have a loan for $320,000 for a home that is valued at $400,000, in which case your loan is 80% of the total value of the home.

As an asset-backed lender, one of the things that makes SALT unique is that we don’t even look at your credit score. With a SALT loan when you have collateral — whether you’re unbanked, haven’t accumulated credit, or have poor credit — you can still get a loan. Instead, SALT uses loan-to-value of your collateral to assign risk. As LTV is a measure of risk, the lower the LTV, the lower the risk for the lender (and therefore the lower the interest rate for the borrower).

How is LTV calculated?

Good question.

LTV is calculated as the loan amount in USD divided by the value of the collateral in USD, expressed as a percentage.

As an example, if you have a current loan balance of $100,000 and your total collateral asset balance is $200,000, you have an LTV of 50%. To make things easier, we’ve added an LTV Helper to the borrower portal that illustrates exactly how the LTV is calculated. See below.

Understanding LTV and how it’s calculated is essential to making an informed decision about your loan terms. Liquidation events benefit no one, which is why we provide the tools like our automated notification system to help you avoid them. Before you apply for a loan, you should ask yourself:

How much do I need?
How much total crypto do I have?
Am I prepared to deposit more crypto if necessary to lower my LTV?

Once you answer these questions, you can choose the LTV that’s right for you.

Starting LTV

When you are taking out a loan against your crypto assets with SALT, you presently have 3 options for your starting LTV; 30%, 40% and 50%. The starting LTV will determine approximately how much (in terms of dollars) of the crypto asset you will need for that loan.

From the example above, for a $100,000 loan, you would need $200,000 in Bitcoin, Ether, Doge, or Litecoin to secure the 50% LTV loan option. For a 40% LTV, it would be $250,000 and for 30% LTV, it would be approximately $333,333.

Using LTV as a measure of risk, the 30% LTV option is the lowest risk.

Why is a lower LTV seen as less risk?

As the LTV goes up, the value of the underlying asset goes down. In the case of a crypto asset-backed loan, the value of Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, or Doge is trending down.

If the price of the crypto asset falls too low, the LTV will continue to increase. As it approaches 100%, there is a threshold where the collateralized asset will be sold to pay back the loan. This is known as the liquidation threshold. This threshold can vary from business to business and loan to loan.

For our example, let’s say the liquidation threshold is set to a 90% LTV.

When the LTV ratio reaches 90%, the crypto asset will be sold to reduce the LTV back down.

Timeout. Liquidations!?!

At SALT, we pride ourselves in having a robust notification system that relays important account activity to borrowers via our portal, text, phone calls, and emails. We give you control of how you want to be notified about each activity. You can be notified of everything from deposits and withdrawals to LTV warning thresholds.

As a borrower, you always have the option to transfer more collateral at any time.

Back to LTVs.

Why does this matter?

As you might be aware, the price of Bitcoin (or any crypto asset) can move up and down. As the price moves up, your LTV goes down. As the price moves down, your LTV goes up.

To build on our earlier example of a $100,000 loan with a 50% LTV, let’s use Bitcoin as the underlying crypto asset. In this example, let’s use $4,000 as the US dollar price of 1 Bitcoin.

Loan Amount = $100,000

Starting LTV = 50%

Price of 1 Bitcoin = $4,000

Doing the math $200,000/$4,000, you would need approximately 50.00 BTC to get a $100,000 loan with a 50% starting LTV.

Bringing it all together!

From above, assuming the liquidation threshold is set at 90% LTV, the price of 1 Bitcoin would need to go all the way down to approximately $2,222 to raise the LTV up to the liquidation threshold of 90% LTV.

A $100,000 loan with a starting LTV of 40%, would require 62.50 BTC at a price of $4,000 per Bitcoin. However, the 90% liquidation threshold would not be reached until the price of 1 Bitcoin went down to approximately $1,778.

Repeating the example with a 30% LTV, you would need 83.33 BTC at a price of $4,000 per Bitcoin and would reach the 90% liquidation threshold when the price of 1 Bitcoin was approximately $1,333.

STABILIZE IT

Today we’re proud to announce a partnership with CENTRE Consortium to accept USD Coin (USDC) as collateral.

A product of a collaborative effort between, Coinbase, Circle, and the CENTRE Consortium, USDC is a new stablecoin backed by the US dollar. According to Coinbase, “One USDC is a 1:1 representation of a US dollar on the Ethereum blockchain” and “each USDC is 100% collateralized by a corresponding USD held in accounts subject to regular public reporting of reserves.” From a credibility standpoint, Circle has partnered with accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP to conduct monthly audits of US dollar reserves backing the number of USDC tokens in circulation.

Why add USDC?

We’re constantly evaluating and analyzing new collateral options to determine how a given collateral will benefit our customers. Typically, we base our decision to add a new collateral type on a number of factors including the voting feature on our borrower portal. In this case however, we deliberately chose to add USDC in direct response to the market volatility we’ve recently experienced.

When there’s volatility in the market, it directly impacts your LTV, which can result in an undesired loss of collateral. We’ve heard your feedback regarding the need for transfer options that can be implemented on nights, weekends, and holidays. We’re adding USDC to the mix because we want you to keep your crypto, markets don’t.

By adding USDC we’re providing a quick, easy way for you to stabilize your LTV when there’s a rapid drop in the market. Given it’s backed by the US dollar but isn’t wholly tied to the U.S. banking system, you can transfer USDC as collateral at any point in time to bring your LTV back down. Now, rather than waiting for the bank to open to lower your LTV with a wire transfer, you can take immediate action when you notice your collateral is declining in value due to market volatility.

With the addition of USDC, SALT now offers loans backed by Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, DOGE, and USDC — you can secure a loan backed 100 percent by a single collateral type or combine them in a way that works for you.

Interested in applying for a loan? Sign up here. Or visit saltlending.com to learn more about SALT’s offerings.