Bitcoin Forum

Japan to offer interest-paying accounts in Bitcoin. Are they pioneers or are there any other projects of the kind?

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck is to offer the first interest-paying deposit accounts for Bitcoin. The project might have great influence on Bitcoin adoption, both in Japan and worldwide. As Bitcoin is getting increasing popular, such projects might greatly contribute to its adoption by common users.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/interest-paying-accounts-in-bitcoin-in-japan/

And there I was thinking that the infamous pirate@40 was the pioneer of this model ;D

I have seen enough of what happens when coins are stored on an exchange of any kind.  Interest on such accounts sounds really great and might indicate a move towards general acceptance.  However; what good would a few interest points be if the coins disappear?  I want to learn about how they are going to be secured beyond how the normal exchanges have gone over the years.  Its tough to imagine sleeping well at night with 100 coins (example only) sitting on an exchange.  If you are only storing 1 or 2 the interest would be "pennies.

People are blinded by their own greed and will grab opportunities like these with both hands without hesitation. I personally would never ever hand over my coins to an entity in return for a few percent (or whatever else their rate might be) annually. I like how Bitcoin gives me the opportunity to be in full control of my wealth -- it's sad that not everyone appreciates it in the same way as I do....

Why not if they're backed by government and have insurance? I would never trust a private company to take my money as bitcoin is money.

Please if you ever found a government backed company willing to pay me a good interest on the dollar value of bitcoin then I'm all in but if they are not accounting the fluctuations and pay a fix rate then I can put my fiat in banks instead of converting them into bitcoin and give them away.

It will be interesting to see how they generate returns to fund the interest on these accounts.
They could charge their other customers for margin trades. But it is tough to consistently generate revenue through these measures.

Because those kind of insurance policies don't pay out if they default on their creditors, that's why. In other words, the insurance doesn't actually protect the depositors at all. Have you forgotten what happened in 2008? Or in 2013/2014 to the Cypriots and Greeks?

Interest rates mainly exist to counter inflation.  In a currency which isn't inflationary until adoption slows down and the block reward is still higher than the amount of lost coins (unlikely to happen for a long time) there's no point in interest-paying systems.

It also just acts as an incentive for people to store excessive amounts of Bitcoin in centralised services.

Obviously the banks are too clever - they can't ban Bitcoin, so what do they do?  Just pay people interest for holding Bitcoin with them instead of actually owning it, operating a credit system, preventing illegal transactions from their "accounts" and boom, the only difference to fiat money from their perspective is the limited supply.