Rates, terms, and fees below were checked directly against SALT Lending’s own site on September 10, 2026. Crypto lending terms change without much notice, so confirm current numbers with SALT before you apply, and get the full fee schedule in writing. We have no affiliate relationship with SALT, so nothing in this review is influenced by commission.
SALT Lending is still operating as of September 2026. Its site has a working application, a live rates page, and loan terms that look competitive on paper against most of the crypto lenders still standing.
This review replaces an older one from 2020 that no longer reflects the company or its history. It covers how SALT’s loans work, what they currently cost, and the regulatory record SALT has accumulated since we last wrote this. We also cover the 2022 withdrawal freeze, what SALT does and doesn’t disclose about custody, and whether we think it’s a lender worth using today.
How SALT Lending Works
SALT offers crypto-backed cash loans. You deposit crypto as collateral, SALT holds it for the life of the loan, and you receive cash (or in some cases, stablecoin) in return. You make payments over the loan term, and once the loan is paid off, SALT releases your collateral back to you.
The collateral SALT accepts is Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, USDT, and SALT’s own token. Your loan-to-value ratio, or LTV, determines both your interest rate and how much cushion you have if the price of your collateral drops. A 30% LTV loan means you’ve put up roughly three dollars of collateral for every dollar you borrow; a 70% LTV loan means you’ve put up less cushion, so a price drop is more likely to trigger a margin call or a forced sale of your collateral to cover the loan.
Loans run for 1, 3, or 5 years, and the minimum loan size is $5,000, subject to what’s available in your area. If your collateral’s value falls enough during the loan term, you’ll typically be asked to post more collateral or pay down the loan to bring the LTV back in line. If you don’t, SALT can liquidate part or all of your collateral to protect its position. That structure is standard for this kind of lending and isn’t unique to SALT.
Current Rates and Terms (Checked September 2026)
Per SALT’s own rates page, last checked September 10, 2026, pricing runs by LTV tier and term length:
- 30% LTV (“Conservative”): 7.49% APR on a 1-year term, 8.24% on a 3-year term, 8.49% on a 5-year term.
- 50% LTV (“Standard”): 8.75% APR on a 1-year term, 9.50% on a 3-year term, 9.75% on a 5-year term.
- 70% LTV (“Max Liquidity”): 10.50% APR, offered only as a 1-year term.
The minimum loan is $5,000. SALT lists 0% origination fees, 0% prepayment fees, and 0% custody fees, which is a genuinely competitive baseline if it holds.
It doesn’t end there, though. SALT’s rates page also lists a longer set of situational fees that apply in specific circumstances: 1.5% for crypto payment processing, 1.5% if you pay off your loan using your own collateral rather than cash, 3% for an optional “Stabilization” feature, 5% for an optional “Liquidation” feature, and a variable “SALT Shield” fee calculated from your total collateral, LTV, and remaining term. None of these are exotic by industry standards, but they add up to a fee schedule that’s longer than the “0% origination” headline suggests.
There’s also a discrepancy we could not resolve. A third-party review site currently lists a 1% origination fee and an APR range of roughly 8.95% to 14.45%, figures that don’t match what SALT’s own rates page shows. We’re treating SALT’s own page as the authoritative source here, but we can’t explain the gap, and it’s reason enough to get the complete, current fee schedule in writing before you sign anything.
SALT lends in 47 states plus DC, but excluding New York, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The Regulatory Record
SALT has two regulatory actions on its record, and both are worth understanding.
The first dates back to September 2020, when the SEC settled charges against SALT over its 2017 token sale. SALT had raised roughly $47 million selling SALT tokens that the SEC determined were unregistered securities. SALT paid a $250,000 civil penalty, agreed to a cease-and-desist order, and ran a claims process to refund people who had bought tokens in the sale.
The second is more recent and, for a borrower deciding whether to use SALT today, more relevant. In December 2024, California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation issued a consent order against SALT covering 342 loans made to 151 California residents, examined from November 2019 to November 2022. SALT agreed to pay $162,800 in refunds to those borrowers plus $137,500 in penalties, a total of $300,000.
The findings behind those numbers included understated APRs, misleading statements about loan terms, undisclosed administrative fees, a failure to assess whether borrowers could actually repay their loans, and a period where SALT’s net worth fell below the minimum California requires of licensed lenders.
Two details often get reported wrong, so we want to state them plainly. The $137,500 penalty was not waived. It was paid in six installments between February and August 2025. And SALT’s California lending license was not revoked. It was reinstated effective January 15, 2025, once SALT completed the refunds and penalty payments the order required.
It’s worth being direct about why the DFPI findings matter more than a typical regulatory fine. Understated APRs and undisclosed fees aren’t a side issue in a lending business; they’re the actual numbers a borrower uses to decide whether a loan is worth taking. A lender that gets those numbers wrong, whether by error or by design, has failed at the one thing a borrower is relying on it to get right.
The 2022 Withdrawal Freeze
On November 15, 2022, in the immediate aftermath of FTX’s collapse, SALT paused withdrawals and deposits, citing its own exposure to FTX. BnkToTheFuture, which had a non-binding letter of intent to acquire SALT, terminated that deal the same day, also citing SALT’s FTX exposure.
SALT didn’t reopen quickly. In February 2023, the company recapitalized by raising $64.4 million, converting debt it owed to existing borrowers and lenders into equity, and said it intended to resume full operations that quarter.
Several questions from that period remain open, and we want to say so rather than guess. We could not confirm how large SALT’s FTX-related loss actually was. We could not confirm whether every customer affected by the freeze was eventually made whole, or on what timeline. And we could not find the proof-of-reserves that SALT said in 2023 it would publish. None of that means the worst interpretation is correct; it means these specific facts aren’t publicly verifiable as far as we could determine.
Separately, the DFPI consent order independently confirms that SALT’s net worth did fall below the required legal minimum between October 2022 and April 2023, which corroborates that the company was under real financial strain during exactly this window.
Custody, and What Isn’t Published
SALT’s site states that it does not rehypothecate borrower collateral, that collateral is held in institutional-grade custody kept separate from SALT’s own funds, and that it is never re-lent, traded, or reused.
That’s the claim. What SALT’s site doesn’t do is name a specific custodian, disclose any insurance coverage on the collateral it holds, or publish a proof-of-reserves or independent audit that would let a borrower verify any of it. Third-party sources have named Fireblocks and BitGo in connection with SALT, but SALT itself does not confirm either name on its own site, so we’re not treating that as established.
There’s also a tension we couldn’t resolve on our own. The DFPI consent order requires SALT to disclose “collateral rehypothecation rights” to borrowers going forward, language that implies SALT’s loan agreement may reserve some right to rehypothecate collateral even while its marketing says collateral is never re-lent. It’s possible this is a dormant contractual right SALT doesn’t currently exercise. It’s also possible it’s a real gap between what the marketing says and what the contract allows. We can’t tell which from the outside, and we think a prospective borrower should ask SALT directly, in writing, before depositing collateral.
For comparison, Ledn publishes CPA-audited proof-of-reserves so a borrower can independently verify that the collateral it claims to hold actually exists. SALT currently offers no equivalent.
What Other Reviewers Say About SALT
SALT’s Trustpilot score sits around 4.8 out of 5 from roughly 163 reviews, and its BBB profile shows an A+ rating with no complaints on file. Here’s one glowing review:
I was able to talk to a representative and setup live meetings. It made me feel comfortable to take the next step and get a bitcoin backed loan. The platform is easy to use and you can understand where the status of your loan and actions one needs to take to keep loan in healthy stage. As a bitcoin holder, it’s hard to trust any institution with your bitcoin. Salt has a longer track record than other institutions. — Pete
And another not-so-glowing review:
There are multiple views of the payment schedule/past payments that are erroneous, in that they do not reflect reality. I spent a week trying to alert HQ, and they denied it, full-stop in spite of screenshot evidence. Another bad thing is that there is a button for ACH payment, but when clicked, it says it’s “temporarily unavailable.” Well, it’s been ‘temporarily unavailable’ for a year now, and I suspect vicarious methods of payment are encouraged, as they take longer, are less convenient, and therefore precipitate in a higher likelihood of you missing your payment and losing your collateral, so that’s something. Can’t wait til someone reputable offers BTC loans. — Litton
Both Trustpilot numbers look good, and we don’t think they’re fabricated. But 163 reviews accumulated over roughly a decade is a thin sample for a lending platform, and the BBB profile in question appears to sit under a related corporate name rather than “SALT Lending” itself, so it may not capture everything a borrower would want it to.
More to the point, none of these review sources engage at all with the DFPI action, the 2022 freeze, or the custody questions above. They’re measuring customer service experience, not the things this review is most concerned with. We also looked for recent, substantive discussion on Reddit and didn’t find any, which is itself worth noting for a platform with this much history.
FAQs
Is SALT Lending still in business?
Yes. As of September 2026, SALT’s site has an active rates page, a working loan calculator, and an open application process. It has also expanded its regulatory footprint recently, including approval to lend in Nevada. That’s evidence against a shutdown, though it isn’t independent confirmation of how much loan volume the company is currently originating.
Is SALT Lending safe?
It depends on what you mean by safe. SALT is licensed and currently operating, and hasn’t collapsed the way some crypto lenders did. But it has a documented regulatory history involving understated APRs and undisclosed fees, and it doesn’t publish the kind of custody and reserve evidence that would let you verify where your collateral sits or that it’s actually there. Those are real gaps, not reassurances we can wave away.
Did SALT customers lose money in 2022?
SALT paused withdrawals and deposits on November 15, 2022, citing exposure to the FTX collapse, and recapitalized with $64.4 million in February 2023. We could not confirm the size of SALT’s FTX-related loss or whether every affected customer was eventually made whole. Those specifics aren’t publicly available as far as we could determine, which is itself worth knowing before you assume the matter is fully resolved.
What credit score do you need for a SALT loan?
None. SALT’s loans are collateral-based, not credit-based, so your credit score isn’t part of the approval decision. What matters is the value and type of crypto you put up as collateral, and your LTV ratio.
Our Verdict: Who SALT Might Suit
SALT is a real, licensed lender that is currently operating, and its advertised rates are genuinely competitive, particularly at the 30% LTV tier. It did not collapse, and it is not a scam. That much should be said plainly, because a lot of what gets repeated about SALT online overstates how bad things are right now.
At the same time, SALT carries a regulator-documented history of exactly the failures that matter most to a borrower: understated APRs, undisclosed fees, and a period of insufficient net worth, all confirmed by California’s DFPI rather than by rumor. And SALT does not publish the custody and reserve evidence that the lenders we recommend do publish. Those two facts, taken together, are why SALT is not currently on our list of recommended lenders. It isn’t a moral judgment. It’s that we can’t verify the things we’d want to verify before telling someone to send their crypto there.
SALT may still suit a specific kind of borrower: Someone who wants a 5-year term, or who wants to borrow at a 70% LTV, since most lenders we do recommend don’t offer either option. If that’s you, go in with the caveats above clearly in mind, and get the full fee schedule confirmed in writing first.
If your main concern is knowing where your collateral actually sits and being able to verify it, look at a lender that publishes that proof:
- Ledn publishes CPA-audited reserves and is worth a look for that reason alone.
- Coinbase runs its loan product on-chain, so terms are verifiable independent of the company’s own claims.
- Strike offers fixed-rate loans with a simpler fee structure.
For a full breakdown of current rates and terms across all of them, see our crypto loan comparison page.
