Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone,

I have a question:

Can Bitcoin be designed to make periodic repayments of lets say...consumer loans? And if not, can it be accomplished with smart contracts and are there examples?

Thanks in advance

Do you mean use bitcoin to pay loans? The possibility of this depends if the bank that you applied loan with will take bitcoin as a payment. It doesn't have to do wether to design bitcoin as a periodic repayment as you say, it depends on your agreement with the management and i think this is possible especially if the management has knowledge about bitcoin.

Yes, it can be done. It's not a rocket science and definitely doable. You don't do it on Bitcoin protocol level and you don't need a smart contract for that (the latter could work too though). You could implement it ie. as a feature of bitcoin wallet that lets you send predetermined amount at specified time to given address either as one-time or recurring transaction. Although in this case you'd need to have your wallet active and connected to internet at the time of transaction.

It's even easier if done via 3rd party service - apparently Coinbase was experimenting with such feature back in 2014 (don't use them so don't know whether this is still the case): https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-Bitcoin-recurring-payment-platform

It could definitely be done at the wallet level, but if ever consumer loans start to be payable by Bitcoin, it might be more apt to use smart contracts -- they're aiming to make paper contracts obsolete after all.

There are no examples of this exact functionality thus far, but the Lightning Network basically operates on smart contracts. It probably won't be too hard to build another layer on top of it to execute certain kinds.

It can be possible as all it will need is a platform to use and the agreement of a bank or loan company to use such platform, but as long as any bank or loan company does not consider cryptocurrency as a mode of loan payment then even with a platform you cannot pay your loans using it. But hopefully such initiative should be made as I believe that it is one of the industries that would benefit in the blockchain technology.

ideas related to smart contracts already existed after a few years of bitcoin was created, but bitcoin has not implemented it, because bitcoin scalability is increasing over time, so bitcoin developers prefer to develop other things to solve every problem.

thank you very much. much appreciated  :)

i have another question  ::) ::)

what is the answer to this question for other cryptocurrencies (namely those with currently highest market caps?

-i assume the answer for ethereum is "yes, with smart contracts"
-what is the answer for ripple? i can't seem to find this feature here: https://developers.ripple.com/complex-payment-types.html
-for BCH and LTC its the same as for BTC?
-EOS would probably be capable of it just like ethereum?
-what about stellar?

Smart contracts aren't available yet for bitcoin. Using intermediate services or web wallets having this activated offer could resolve such issue but I do not recommend that unless you put there a part of your money.

It would be useful to specify what actually are you looking for. Do you want it done as smart contract, 3rd party service, or via dedicated software? Are payments to be an USD equivalent? If so you'd need an oracle for smart contracts to tell you the exchange rate.

Short answer, you could do it with any listed coin, even as smart contracts, but the latter would probably be easiest with ETH or EOS as they were designed for that.

Yes, it can be done with Bitcoin. And technically with any cryptocurrency.
I do not know if there is dedicated crypto for that, but you can create one for that particular offer.
If you talk about smart contracts, it makes it easier, and this article explains how to do it[1].

[1] https://smartym.pro/blog/ethereum-network-what-are-the-restrictions-of-smart-contracts-and-how-to-bypass-them/

i'm currently writing my bachelor thesis and while i know that ETH oder XRP have a different purpose, a part of my work is listing differences between their capability to function as money. and one sub-category is being a standard of deferred payment (excluding the volatility aspect)

@hugeblack
that's a really interesting article. thanks for that

Yes i think it can be accomplished since bitcoin have a transaction with the use of technology but it depends on how they manage it. and i think they design bitcoin as periodic repayment in the next several years. They should think first a smart  contract or way that everyone could access. They should have a strong platform before they implement it. It also depends on the agreement of management but i think it could be accomplished since they have a prior knowledge about bitcoin.

Actually, the more management knows about Bitcoin, the less likely they are to get involved with it. Bitcoin suffers from serious problems of speed, economy, and stability which precludes it from ever becoming a universally accepted medium of exchange.

Bitcoin is akin to a roulette wheel - good for gambling but not much else.

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