The way I see it, the SALT Lending project is primarily a pump-n-dump business model.
While early participants of the ICO may lock in their over 13x massive profits thru selling, they may also be using their holdings to pump up the price, thus one reason why no outsiders heard about it when it was selling for 0.75.
Buy some millions of tokens at 0.75, use them as collateral for USD borrowing, use the USD to pump up the token price, sell to fools, use the profits to settle the loan and buy up more token, use additional token for further borrowing, use the new borrowing to pump up the price, rinse and repeat.
This can be very feasibly done because the supply of tokens sold at 3 and below is far more significant and constitute a major bulk of the entire supply.
Considering the lack of liquidity of token sold at 5 and above, such pump-n-dump operations can be very easily carried out.
And pricing tier sold at 0.75, 1.5, 3, 5, and above are simply an obvious red flag.
I am not sure if Eric from Shapeshift is a co-founder, but I suspect he is just an appointed one to be a public figurehead.
This pump-n-dump business model is very brilliantly designed, may be very profitable, but highly unethical and immoral.

Edit:
There is very little to no value transfer to the token holders thru the usual means of economic utility, except thru pump-n-dump, based on current structure.