Bitcoin Forum

What is the deal with BTCJam?  I invested in a few loans and some of them are overdue.  When I look at the rating for the users, they are 0.  When I made the investment, they were 15.  

Have you guys been getting scammed too?  

Yes, I've had a few bad experiences with BTCJam. The problem is that there is really no way to hold people who use it accountable so if they run off with the BTCs you are out of luck. Plus I've noticed that people can change their username easily even if they have loans already and still take out new ones.

Dont go by the Credit rating, any one can achieve that just by linking all the accounts and verifying the phone number.
When you are looking to INVEST there FIRST look for these signs to avoid getting ripped off :

0. Check for previous repayments and active or repaid loans.
1. Check the linked paypal and ebay ratings
2. SSN verified always gives an added trust advantage.
3. check for USER RATINGS.
4. check for escrow funded signs (yellow round thingy on the listing)
5. invest with many borrowers but dont invest more than 0.5 or 1 BTC per borrower, that way IF someone defaults you can still bear the loss.
Keep in mind Lending is a high risk gambling especially when it comes to bitcoins, lended correctly with the correct use of the human brain that you have and you could make more money than you can with Mt Gox trading.

The user that had a high 'Credit score rating' had his rating degraded to 0 BECAUSE he failed to pay you on time.


With that said I have 2 active listings there, check my profile and posts here and on BTCJAM and judge for yourself if you think I am worth investing on.

* I tried verifying my phone with btcjam but every time I enter the verification code it says server error.

* I have already submitted my ID & address verification but the status is still showing as "Being verified".

My active loan listings at : https://btcjam.com/listings/3299 and https://btcjam.com/listings/3154


Thanks its your earned coins, its your responsibility to make sure you dont get scammed so all the best :)

I'm fed up with BTCJam.

It's a great idea, but with so many scams and no realistic way to hold borrowers accountable, it's an enormous risk for lenders. With most of the interest rates on these loans in the "under 10%" range, it's not worth the risk.



With all that said, I only lost ~2 btc to shoddy loans before calling it quits...but that still would have been over $400 yesterday (and still $140 at this moment). That's quite a bit to lose to "safe" loans, and I'd hate to think how much in total has been lost on the site.

Didnt you take a risk when you decided to start mining / using BTC ?
How is this any different ?



We have to stick to the belief satoshi had - There are more good people in the world than the Bad ones.

Of course I took a risk by purchasing (and using) Bitcoins,  and of course there are many upstanding characters in the cryptocurrency community. Perhaps they are a minority now, but that is a different discussion. The point is, I'm hardly arguing with that and I wholeheartedly agree...but this is not a valid defense of BTCJam.



My beef with BTCJam basically stems from:

• Lack of investor protection. If someone defaults on the site, you're shit outta luck...the ToS explicitly state that "Under no circumstances should you attempt collection on a late payment yourself. In doing so you run the risk of creating a legal liability for yourself and the website cannot be hold responsible." And, frankly, I have no idea if BTCJam bothers to try and collect on defaulted loans; due to the anonymous nature of Bitcoins, it seems like it would be quite challenging. Yes, they do now have "secured loans", but how often do you actually see them being used?
• Meaningless borrower ratings. With a Google Voice number, some bogus social networking accounts, a paypal account, and a falsified government ID...suddenly you're probably easily at over 10 points without actually proving any sort of reliability. Even judging a user by their past performance is no guarantee as I once found out the hard way after successfully loaning to this user a few times (https://btcjam.com/users/394). To me, it seems there is no reliable way to judge a user's actual credibility given the information presented on BTCJam, and that bothers me greatly.

Frankly, it seems more like a gambling site than a lending site. The tools provided to investors are lacking (at best) and new users will likely be scammed a few times before learning how to tell a likely scam. When combined, these factors, in addition to my above points, provide a great environment for con artists to make a quick buck...and for investors to lose their hard-earned coins.



I think a well-defined loan recovery plan would greatly raise my opinion of BTCJam. At this time, I see no effort on their part to repatriate (or at least reliably prevent) lost investment funds, so I don't see myself using their site anytime soon.

What I hate about BTCJAM ? Once I invest I cant UN invest :/

The sad thing is that some of the people there could use the BTC for help but if there's no lender safety or serious way to perform due diligence you're better off using BTC at a casino instead because then as stated earlier this is just gambling.

Our repayment rate is way higher than a cassino.

Also, the rating system is here to prevent anonymous people to run with your coins. We also have implemented international arbitration, the defaulters will have their identities disclosed as we get the partnership going.

This is a P2P lending site, we verify the identity of borrowers, only paypal verified accounts are accepted. They have a very rigid procedure to verify an account, you must have access to the credit card statement of the person, you must be able to deposit some pennies via credit card on paypal account with the same identity and the address must match.

Please, i invite you to submit a falsified ID to the site an try to get it approved.

We have also started to implement the first steps toward collection, we have now international arbitration and the identities of the borrowers will be disclosed in case of default. More news soon.

OMG..You sound like a bunch of whiney, government fed babies on here: "Wahhh..I want to invest with zero risk..wahhh"

Grow the F up. Why don't you look at the LOAN HISTORY of people and see if they have repaid loans? Invest with people who you can verify their online identity and reputation.

Honestly, you all sound like you want someone to hold your hand while you take a shit.

and when will that happen?

When people stop using BTCJam.

John, do you really think the best thing to do is to use the unverified, informal, anonymous, post count reputation based lending that goes on this forum?

We have a contract signed with them, the loan is considered a default after 120 days late.

The documents will be handed to the authorities and to investors if the award is issued.

I have yet to see an example of what you said happening. Can you point me an example of where you have taken such measures to recover the principle (and the interests involved)?

I see such threads popping up a lot: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166974.0

I am tying to get my first Asic with this method, my family dont trust in BTC like me and the first investment cant be the total of the cost. So I think I can get 0.57229BTC at month from my monthly budget and Ill try to go for it.

I think that will be profitable for me but sure will be profitable for the investors.

Thanks BTCJam for this service.

it seems the note sell feature is currently broken.
i cant put anything up for sale.

We are finishing the API integration, the legal aspects are solved :). The new agreement is online and all the current loans will be affected.

We are waiting the integration to finish to make the announcement.

https://i.imgur.com/pCuEbfx.png

What do you mean by "anything"? All your investments?

That's a fine addition to BTCJam, Tulkas!

Hopefully this will cut down on the scamming rates then. Is judge.me arbitration possible if the defendant plays dumb?

Holy *whoosh* of sonic boom proportions, Batman...impressive job of missing the point entirely.

My point from before, for your convenience:

Again, this user had a crystal clear loan history prior to defaulting on 19 loans and making off with at least 190 BTC. (https://btcjam.com/users/394) So yes, their loan history now is tarnished beyond repair...but at the time, their loan history was spotless enough to con several dozen users. A proper comprehensive solution has to go beyond just a loan history check. I'd invite you to similarly "grow the F up" and think of a constructive solution, rather than mindlessly lashing out for no conceivable reason and trolling what could otherwise be a helpful discussion. And also to put on the big-boy pants and type out "fuck" properly.




I am strongly tempted to take up your offer to submit falsified information, if only to see what happens with my own eyes. I'm still not wholly convinced that all parameters used to build user's credit rating are foolproof, nor am I fully convinced by Paypal's seal of verification (if only because I'm skeptical of Paypal these days).


But, with all that said, I'm very pleased to hear that BTCJam is aware of these recurring problems and that ya'll are taking a proactive approach to resolving them. You have my kudos for that if nothing else, and I may use the site more frequently in the future with such guarantees in place.

yeah, if i click on the "Issue Sell ORder" button nothing happens. there used to be a pop up where i can define the price.

also, the notes i have previously put up are no longer visible under "Your Notes"

Hi,
I used to get an e-mail from BTCJam when anything happened to my account, e.g. I made a payment, someone made a payment to me etc. This has has recently stopped, and I kind of miss those status statements.
Has anyone else also noticed this?

/AlexC 

What is your alias? Let me check if something happened.

Hi,
My BTCJam alias is AlexC. But the emails have started coming again.

Thanks
  Alex

I am in a complicated situation, I have 0,32 unpaid loans to be received before the 1st of June, for this reason I was late to pay my "investors" 0,57 the 1st of June but with an effort i went to pay yesterday (the funds are still in my account) but what a surprise!!! i have to pay 0,5 more by late payment.

Now I understand why I dont have my 0,32 paid, if every time 1 person is late in a payment by days, you charge the double and THEY WILL NEVER PAY ME!!!!

I do not agree with this charge and if Btcjam do not make anything i will pay my investors directly and never ever use that site.

P.D. Btcjam: if you dont agree with that I guess it will not be a problem for you because you are so confident of charging people rates that have not been pay me, that are for you and my 0,32 too.

Oh look! The "future of Bitcoin finance".

I paid the 0.57 from July 1 because I'm not a scammer but I'm not stupid.

Our arbitration policy is online.

This means legally binding loans.

https://btcjam.com/faq/arbitration (https://btcjam.com/faq/arbitration)

Regardning the notification e-mails.
I am not getting them all only some of them. I don't know if they are not getting send or I it is me that is not receiving them.

Does anybody else seems to be missing out on some notification e-mails ?


For instance my loan #5916, i never got a notification e-mail about the investment.

What can I do to help track this down?

Regards
  AlexC

Can you finally sort out my Facebook registration? I linked my account about 4 months ago and revalidated it twice during the past few months and it still asks me to revalidate it, with Facebook reporting that the link is invalid or something like that. I e-mailed you about it 2+ times about it during the past several months. My username there is the same as here.

I would like to put up securi.net as collateral for loans Real 3 (https://www.btcjam.com/listings/5943/) and Real 4 (https://www.btcjam.com/listings/5944/). It's worth almost 2,000.00 United States dollars (USD), so that's at least some guarantee to investors.

How come shbtc (https://www.btcjam.com/users/2110/) has a rating of 31?!?

His loan was secured. Secured loans get a rating bonus.

So:

Does anyone here still use BTCJam?

How is it working out for you these days?

When someone defaults and you get an 'arbitration award' via email... does anything actually happen after that?

I ask because I finally gave up on BTCJam in September 2013. I have 16 'Arbitration Award Case' pdfs on my hard drive now from the times of April to September. And only one of those ended up repaying me. The others... well, maybe the awards 'were passed on to the authorities' but what fucking good is that?

I suppose I'll also ask for form's sake, not because I expect an acceptable answer: Tulkas, all those defaults from before April 2013... what are you DOING about them?

... yeah. Thought so.

Is there any serious P2P lending website running?