[ad_1] A rising player in the world of crypto-mortgages and blockchain-enabled financing, LoanSnap, plans expand its reach in the market by opening its lending platform to licensed mortgage brokers across the country in the near future. Karl Jacob, CEO and co-founder of LoanSnap, said the cyrpto-mortgage system his company has developed can originate more than just loans that LoanSnap mints. In addition to crypto-mortgages, LoanSnap is a full-stack mortgage company that originates traditional mortgages as well. “Our system I think is good enough that it can do not just the loans that we originate, but [loans originated by] other people,” Jacob said. “It’s an open platform. As long as the loans pass the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac test, which is one of the requirements, we would certainly look at those loans. So, it’s not just our loans supplying into this ecosystem … it could be any originator.” Jacob added that LoanSnap, which currently employs about 40 people, has “literally just started” creating a broker network and is planning a formal announcement of the effort soon. “You’re probably one of the first person in the industry that I’m talking to about it,” he added. “…It’s all been organic so far, [so] it’s nascent today, but I expect it to grow quite quickly.” LoanSnap is a mortgage company that employs artificial intelligence (AI) technology to originate loans more efficiently and faster. It offers a 15-day loan-closing window and to date has originated “billions of dollars” worth of traditional mortgages dubbed “smart loans” by the company, according to Jacob, who was one of the original strategic advisors to Facebook when it was in its startup phase. “We saved our customers more than $80 million last year,” he said. “We’re not huge, but we’re not small either.” In addition to originating traditional mortgage loans employing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create efficiencies and to speed up the origination process, LoanSnap has launched an innovative crypto-mortgage program that relies on AI technology, cryptocurrency and linking a real-world mortgage lien to a digital NFT — a nonfungible token. Essentially, through the so-called Bacon Protocol — a set of smart contracts and programming that exists on the Ethereum blockchain platform — investors can purchase stable coins, which are a form of “stable” cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. Those stable coin investments are then pooled to fund digital, AI-enabled mortgages, and the mortgage liens are then indelibly linked to an NFT, which in turn serves as a form of collateral for the stable coins funding the transaction. “So, the process is basically [that] the money [from the mortgage payment] flows back to the people who participate in originating and servicing that loan,” Jacob said. “But the lion’s share of that money goes back to the stable coin holders — the people who lent the money to that borrower through the coin. As far as a borrower is concerned, they just have a home loan, and they make a payment just like they normally would from their bank account, or they also can make it from their crypto [currency] wallet.” Jacob is not alone in seeing the potential upside for crypto-mortgages and AI-enabled traditional loans. To date, LoanSnap has attracted about $53 million in venture capital investment. The crypto-mortgages originated by LoanSnap so far are more akin to home-equity loans as opposed to home-purchase or rate-and-term refinance loans. The liens linked to NFTs represent a portion of a home’s value as a result. To date, LoanSnap has originated about $7.3 million in crypto-loans across 27 homes that have a total value of $43 million. The annual percentage yield for holders of LoanSnap’s stable coin used to fund the mortgages, called bHome, as of this week was 3.434%. On the high end, one bHome-funded crypto-mortgage involves an $820,000 mortgage and lien on a California home valued at $20 million. Another transaction, on the low end, involves a $30,000 NFT-backed mortgage loan and lien for a home in Vancouver, Washington, valued at $432,000, according to the Bacon Coin website. “It’s significant,” Jacob said. “It’s getting to be a big project.” Jacob added that he was an advisor to Facebook “when it was six guys in a house in Palo Alto [California],” so he has some receipts in making winning bets on emerging markets. “A lot of people when we started the stable coin stuff thought, you know, we’re [crazy], it’s small, but that’s exactly what they told us at Facebook,” Jacob recalled. “I’ll never forget the moments when we were pitching it [Facebook] as an investment, and the most common feedback we got was, ‘You guys are screwed because MySpace has 100 million users, and you will never catch them.’” Facebook is now approaching 3 billion users worldwide. By one estimate, the global cryptocurrency market, although volatile, is valued today at around $1.8 trillion and is projected to exceed $32 trillion in value by 2027. “When we’re talking about the crypto stuff, we don’t need [warehouse lenders] because warehouse lines are really a creation of the industry to solve a problem, which is that funders can’t fund fast enough. And we don’t have that problem with blockchain because it funds [loans] in minutes,” Jacob said. “I do think on the correspondent side and beyond, there’s definitely an opportunity, even for existing mortgage companies that are really good at the sales and marketing side, but maybe not so good at the back-end processing and all that. That’s what we built our system to do [for crypto and traditional mortgages].” LoanSnap is not alone in seeing future opportunity in the crypto-mortgage market. LauraMac is a software as a service, or SaaS, firm that provides due-diligence automation tools for the secondary market. Its technology is used by third-party due diligence firms that assess mortgage pools in securitization transactions in the private label market. Bob Fulton, CEO of LauraMac, said he is seeing increased interest in including comprehensive loan information in secured blockchain-enabled mortgage transactions. “That would really be a value-add because the lien alone doesn’t tell you much, other than who