Adult Internet pioneer Rick Latona, the man behind Consumption Junction and Dollars.com, has launched an online pawn shop, DigiPawn.com.
The site offers loans of $100 to $1 million where users put up their intellectual property – domain names, Web sites, content, patents, trademarks, etc. – as collateral. The loans are based on the assessed value of the borrower’s intellectual property.
For Latona, DigiPawn is somewhat of a return to his roots.
“I owned a real-world pawn shop in the early ‘90s. I also own thousands of domains. I suppose that the two experiences in my head made me come up with the idea,” he told AVNOnline.com. “I know I’ll be successful because I’ve been successful in both industries already.”
Users of DigiPawn put their assets in a trust during the loan period. However, borrowers can still use the property during the loan cycle, which is based on a 30-day period. At the end of 30 days the borrower repays the loan in full and is released from their obligation, pays the interest and renews the loan, or defaults and loses the property.
Having owned a brick-and-mortar pawn shop, Latona knows that some people hold a negative point-of-view of the business. However, he feels that his latest venture will be able to avoid some of that due to its unique nature.
“The biggest negative stereotype that pawn shops usually get is that they get stolen goods from time to time. In my case, we can verify that we are dealing with the true and correct owner on each loan,” he said.
Furthermore, this isn’t the typical shop you can walk into and sell the watch off your wrist. It can take up to 48 hours for the borrower to actually receive the cash.
“You could almost call that a cooling-off period if someone is making a rash decision,” Latona said.
DigiPawn is a licensed pawn broker in the U.S. state of Georgia and customers are protected by U.S. and state pawn shop laws.
