yeah right @ 1% per day.

New scammer tactic:

1. Make an account
2. Head straight to Lending
3. Offer trivial loans
4. Ask for 50+ BTC loan two weeks later

yea Ive seen them at the service station. Do you need to provide ID to buy them ? Ive always wondered that....

Interesting. Could you give us more details (fees, conditions, etc.)?

I don't see how giving out loans increases trust. It's the other way around to gain trust.

Esp. since he's sitting on pile of BTC https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86283.0 

Hi buddy,

I actually work in a bank (Hedge Funds these days) and I have often thought the same thing, however I think there are several moral and practical issues you'd have to overcome.

Bitcoin is designed to be decentralised and unregulated - so I think your first issue would be to set up a virtual bank where you could move funds between accounts easily and identify each user.

Also the lack of regulation begs the question what you would do when someone failed to repay their loans. I don't know how it works in normal life but on Silk Road a user usually posts a thread in the forums asking for a loan, stating how much they need and when they need it paid back - usually it's for a small amount as they need to round up an order to X number of Bitcoins.

Obviously it helps if you have been on there a while and are more trustworthy - we had a "Hero Member" asking for 0.5 BTC the other day for instance and he quickly received the funds he needed.

Why not build trust by starting up a bank in your own right? Perhaps you could start with "micro credit" loaning out small sums to people and then gradually increase the sums as they proved themselves to you?

All the best,

V.

It is easy if you live in the US - for people in the UK & Europe there are very few ways to buy Bitcoins with cash.

I should lay my cards on the table and say I sell Bitcoins for cash to people over here in the UK but it doesn't make it any less true to say that the only ways to obtain Bitcoin safely are buying them for cash or selling products/services in exchange for them.

Any other methods are potentially traceable. I work in a bank and can tell you for nothing that the exact time of each transaction, even a cash deposit is recorded, therefore your face will be visible on security cameras!

I don't want to sound overly paranoid. You can hugely increase your anonymity by using services like Bitinstant in the US and also running your BTC through a coin mixer.

V.