Another default?  I don't get the impression that this guy is a scammer (watch me be proved wrong) but damn, it's not cool to be careless about this stuff and make people sit around wondering if they got screwed. |
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having just come across this thread a day or 2 ago & read it all through I feel it's about time for the fortnightly 'why this looks so obviously dodgy' post again, so here goes, it's similarity to a Madoff ponzy scheme in that it's very hard to get in to, by referral only, peeps clamoring to invest & singing it & it's maker's praises, pays above average returns, set up & run by a person of high reputation (Mr Mad was prior head of the NY stock Xe), suspected of making these great & regular returns by doing something not quite kosher (front trading his stock broking clients), feeder funds appearing & referral bonuses, no oversight & doesn't allow due diligence (this understandable in the circumstances), marked communal hostility to any nae sayers (FO Troll etc), a clever humorous & self depreciating strategy of drawing in investors with reverse psychology, building an on-call extra large fund that could be drawn down for that fateful day when one sails off on a spanking new 50 foot yacht (with a not so ironic little skull & cross bones pendent) in to the Caribbean sunset - I have too much imagination, I know  ARRRRRG... My booty has been plundered! Hayday of pirating appears to be 1600 - 1750, so though it still goes on probably being born 300+ or 400 years too late would be more accurate & funtimes, the later ones mostly ending up on the gibbet - though free-booting in the US independence & civil wars many found rewarding PMing you now to ask to be added to the waiting list for new accounts & hope that you won't make me walk the plank so that your motley crew of jolly backers can keel-haul me  edit: an ever expanding need for more funds to be deposited (bigger volume new clients) but playing hard to get (some funds returned, no new accounts atm) as this can easily be done with existing peeps wanting more of those big returns, preferring large investors to the small fry (Mr Mad liked Hedge funds & banks more towards the end) if this is as profitable for Pirate as for the investors why hasn't he amassed enough funds by now to be self financing & so keep 100% of the profit, also knowing & being trusted by rl peeps with $10,000s of cash to move around wouldn't some of those be interested in fully funding his ops, it's not like buying BTC anonymously via cash is so hard from the States atm afaik - perhaps they could sell something on TSR to raise a few, a BTC back to cash op might make more sense, in fairness I can see some scenarios where certain peeps would have a lot of cash & just want no hassle BTC regularly so I'm keeping an open mind on all the above synchronicity for the moment. I'll PM P@40 after I've meditated upon it with some Cuba libres, perhaps after all my freely given analysis & input he'll fast track my account  As nobody has bothered to reply to this i will take it on myself to do so. You raise a number of good arguments supporting your apparent view that Pirate is running a ponzi scheme. Your main arguments seem to be: - There are a number of similarities between the Madoff ponzy scheme and Pirate's loan program. - If pirate is making as much money as he claims, why doesn't he use his own money and be fully self-financed? - If pirate is truly dealing with real life people with large amounts of cash why don't they just finance him? You conclude that pirate is one day going to close up shop, take everyone's money, and sail off into the sunset. I will leave aside your third point, which you have already answered yourself when you say 'I can see some scenarios where certain peeps would have a lot of cash & just want no hassle BTC regularly.' As for your first 2 points: The existance of similarities between a ponzi scheme and pirate's loan program is of only small significance. This kind of evidence is not really evidence at all. It is like saying Bitcoin has gone up 4000% in two years, and it rewards early adopters, therefore it is a ponzi. I'm sure you can see the weakness in this kind of argument. It is good to be skeptical of things that sound too good to be true, but you need to be careful not to be so blinded by skepticism that you miss out on legitimate opportunities. As for why pirate doesn't simply use his own money, my understanding is that pirate IS using his own money - but his clients require so many bitcoins that his own resources are not enough. If he is dealing with people with large amounts of cash, then it makes sense that he would not always have enough resources on his own and would need to borrow some from us. The two main reasons why I trust pirate are as follows: Pirate has revealed information rendering himself 100% identifiable. Thus there is no sailing off into the sunset anonymously (of course he will not be identifiable to you, so you will have to take my word for it). What this means is that if pirate were to run off with everyone's money it would result in both criminal (ie fines and prison time) and civil (ie recovering the money owed) legal proceedings. Pirate has launched a business known as GPUMAX, which is still in beta but early indications are that it will be very successful. This is not a sham business created merely to encourage trust by his investors, as it is obvious to anyone who has been accepted into GPUMAX that there has been an enormous amount of work gone into the site and business model. By sailing off into the sunset with everyone's money he would lose this business, which in my opinion has the potential to be far more profitable than his loaning program. Obviously there is some level of risk in investing with pirate. For me, the risk is about the same level as investing in bitcoins to begin with. Remember, the government could decide tomorrow to declare bitcoins illegal, in which case the bitcoin price will crash as people rush to get their coins out. You will need to make your own assessment of the risk and decide whether you want to go ahead and invest anyway. Thank you for a well reasoned response. To answer the question about him using his own money for business instead of the (more expensive) money from his lenders, he's commented several times that he's going to keep doing this until it stops being (as) profitable for him. Once he reaches a point where his business is fully self-sustaining and he has enough disposable income to finance all his operations, the lending program will obviously just stop. For now, he gets more benefit from borrowing our coins than using his own money, but he's made no guarantee that will continue forever, and when (not if: these interest rates simply aren't sustainable in the long run) it stops he'll just return our money and we'll have made a lot of money. Sure, he'll have made a crapton of it, but people enter business agreements because they're mutually beneficial This is all assuming he's honest, of course. If you're really wondering what sort of person he is, come to IRC and stick around a bit. He talks a decent amount and has been around for ages. |
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I love how everything bad is bitcoinica's fault now.
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You say "we need to get back to unity" -- I agree. That is why Luke must go.
Statements like this are also poisonous. Just saying. I mean, I'm trying hard to be on your side here Gavin, but statements like that make me think twice about my stance. Is attempting to excommunicate someone from an open-source rooted, decentralized community really the best way to reach consensus and move forward? What about the recent bug caused by BIP 16? What if there are other unintended consequences? I really understand the need for better multisig support, but I really don't understand the rush. Sure, it will help adoption, but we have plenty of time for that. Patience. You (and the guy telling Gavin to debate Luke's ideas, not his person) have to keep in mind that Gavin is also a person. He's committed substantial amounts of his free time to this project and it must be immensely frustrating to feel like someone's intentionally wasting the little free time you have. Of course, Luke has also committed lots of his free time to the project, so from his point of view Gavin (and many others?) might be doing the same thing. In the longer run, I feel it might boil down to losing one of them (at least from the core team) over this disagreement. It's easy for us to ask them to sort it out peacefully, but sometimes different personality types just don't get along and shouldn't work together. |
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I would prefer low interest since to me it seems like bit coins is a currency for the people and not greed . I know that I'm new and don't have rep but I could send verification of my ID, address, etc in order to protect you and your funds. I think everyone would prefer low interest if it were paired with low risk. I hate to be one of those "defend the status quo" guys, but I'll attempt to justify why things are the way they are, because it isn't (only) what you call greed. You must understand that it's risky (and I mean terrifying, at first) to lend to people over the internet. They might be scam artists, and even if they offer ID they might be using a stolen identity from a hacked computer (or are just identity thieves). So there's a reasonable chance that the borrower just runs off with the loan. This isn't just paranoia: it happens daily here on the forum and on IRC. A second and more subtle risk is in the exchange rate. A couple of months ago, bitcoins were $2 each. Now they're $5.50 each. A few months ago, they were $30 each. Who knows where they'll be in three or four months? All that's certain is that we won't be able to use the coins we lend you during that period. On one hand, the currency might completely crash way below $1, and even if you don't run away with our money, you'll pay us back with completely worthless coins. On the other hand, the currency might take off to $30 or more again! You say you make good money, but can you afford to spend over $10,000 to pay us back the amount we lent you? Even if you do, you might have trouble getting that kind of money into the system to buy coins, and that'll delay repayment, which might impact our plans negatively and cost us even more money. All this amounts to very substantial risk on the part of the lenders around here. It's basic rational behavior to expect higher returns on higher risk, and the risk is undoubtably high around here. And there's the issue of collections, too. Even assuming you're honest and give us a real ID and address and so on, and then have trouble repaying us, most of us are just casual lenders: we don't have the time or money to hunt you down or send collections agencies after you (giving them a big chunk of our payback). In my experience, it's a lot easier to just categorically refuse people you think are likely to default than to ask for higher identity assurance from them (since identity might be an indicator of honesty, but is no guarantee of creditworthiness). We're not greedy; the business is just risky as fuck and if we wanted to charge small interest rates we'd be unwise to lend bitcoins; why not buy some government or corporate bonds for low rates of return? Even junk bonds are probably a lot safer than most of the loans around here. Many of us would like that to change. It feels wrong (and might even be illegal in some places) to charge such large rates on loans, and we think a good reputation and credit ratings system would be a massive step towards being able to offer some people lower rates. Unfortunately, the bitcoin credit market is still young and we aren't there yet, but check back soon and the rates might be lower if you have a good reputation Anyway, I personally am not willing to commit for such a long period at any rate (due to the exchange rate fluctuations I mentioned), but I hope you'll find another lender who's more risk-tolerant! |
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Another old account, revived today...
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I am sure you are aware of the fact that if you generate another address that starts with 1BurtW firstbits will not confuse it with mine because mine is in the block chain first.
However your point that fisrtbits themselves might get hacked is a very good one.
Yeah, I saw that firstbits shouldn't confuse them, but my point was more about the psychology of highlighting a human-readable portion of one's address. It implicitly suggests (to me, at least, but I'm probably more paranoid than most people) that people should look out for that highlighted string as an identifying piece of an address, which is pretty unsafe. I didn't mean to single you out, and you don't even visually highlight the vanity portion of your address (although I have seen people do that in their signatures), but my basic point stays the same about vanity addresses Their goal, as far as I can tell, is to put some identifiable information into the address, but as soon as you start talking about even weak forms of identity without talking about securing it, the threat of identity theft appears! Firstbits attempts to address this by proclaiming that whoever had a given address prefix first in the blockchain is in some sense the legitimate owner of the prefix, but I'm very wary of trusting a third party to make such judgments for us. If it becomes established, it could also be subject to prefix squatting. Anyway, just more rambling from me. I doubt anything bad will happen here, but i just wanted to point out some potential drawbacks |
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You are loaning me 9 BTC. I will pay you 0.75% interest for each full day the 9 BTC is lent to me. The interest will not compound. To minimize book keeping on my end there will be no partial withdraws allowed. You can leave it on deposit for as long as you want to but I reserve the right to give you back your principal plus accrued full day’s interest at any time after 30 full days on deposit. When you want it back (or I give it back to you) I will pay you the entire sum, principal plus accrued interest, in one lump sum. This makes your minimum interest 9 * 0.0075 * 30 = 2.025 if I decide to give it back to you after 30 days. At this time I do not plan to give it back to you until you want it back. The 30 day time period is just an escape clause for me so I am not on the hook for the rest of my life. Your maximum interest is open ended as long as you keep the money in the account and I do not give it back to you after the first 30 days. You can deposit the money into my public first bits account http://firstbits.com/1BurtW = 1BurtWEejbnKeBRsvcydJvsNztB1bXV5iQ I will repay to 127i7LwMgT5WQTaxmGmRDtfWb9w2zZVpz1 Please quote this post and post the transaction id of your deposit so we can publicly track the starting date and time. That should do it! I question the wisdom of using sites like firstbits.com or encouraging people to focus on one's vanity address. We don't know much about who runs the site, first of all, which would allow them to change the addresses, or if their security practices are poor, to do that. A vanity address generator can easily generate a new address with the same short prefix as an existing one (such as BurtW), if you expect people to check the firstbits scheme closely enough to notice if there's a completely unrelated address on there. I expect it's not actually that dangerous, but given how easy it is for me to generate another address starting in BurtW, I think we run the risk of people starting to assume (for no good reason) that if an address is recognizable, it must belong to the person mentioned in the vanity address. |
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It'd be nice if he were more open about what went wrong, kept his lenders up to date about what was going on, and outlined what plans he had to pay them back. Posting cryptic messages along the lines of "it went wrong" or "you'll get the coins back" doesn't really cut it in this sort of situation.
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No, the SolidCoin license is non-free. Free software means the freedom to run, study, modify, and distribute (even for a fee). No Bitcoin is not free because it doesn't allow me to not include a copyright text and because I say so. So there mr smarty pants! I can certainly argue there are damages for running a business built on my code without proper attribution. Haha, tell the judge this. No, the DMCA takedowns were successful in the case of both GitHub and Linode (your former webhost). You've just managed to run away from the law by moving to German servers outside the DMCA jurisdiction. No we did that for the lols and because we dislike the DMCA. People wanted to file a counterclaim and take you to court already out of their own pocket... but there's better ways to do this and we are still collecting information on you and your business dealings with MtGox/Tibanne and what participation they had in this. No, my DMCA takedown notice is 100% factual. Any attempt to go after me will be your own undoing (as in, you'll probably end up with real jail time). No it's you facing serious jail time for using the DMCA on something you do not own and have no claim over. Shouldn't have perjured yourself there bro. Thanks for generally being an unlikeable person too because we are getting plenty of support for this. Holy shit. You need to work on your PR, because you're turning several previously neutral parties against you with this sort of drivel. |
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Don't worry . Rum for everyone! Thanks for the rum! I have my money back with all the interest |
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May I ask if this is going through the giant machine that is pirate's lending program?
You may indeed, but given that nobody can ever say yes to that and retain their privileges on pirate's system, it seems a bit silly to ask. |
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Hi, just to clarify with reference to your pm, you have 100 coin.
How much extra are you after, taking it up to 150 total or a different number.
Patrick
I didn't want to take the whole 150BTC loan from you (as that could make you feel uncertain about the loan) I'd much rather get another 100 loan from you and the 50BTC from other people, so everyone feels more happy and stress free, unless you are able to give me the 150BTC loan? To clarify, I have 100BTC, I need 150BTC more to get what I want to happen. I can afford to repay the loan and I'm offering a generous payback terms. Hope that makes sense, it's 6AM and I haven't slept. <_< Do you think you could update the original post and thread title with the new amount and a note on why the amount has changed? It'd make it easier to keep track of things. |
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hey your a redneck you shouldn't be talking; i bet your addicted to inbreeding with your cousins. Why don't you go scam some more people for pocket change you poor mother fucker Thanks for the kind words, I'm sure your temper tantrums will prove helpful in scoring this loan. Granted, publicly calling a stranger a drug addict isn't exactly good behavior. He might have overreacted, but you've been heckling him for a while now. I'd urge people to disregard the mostly irrelevant exchanges that have been going on here, and to try to focus on the loan at hand. It'd be even better if the bickering stopped |
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A few observations:
- I don't use IRC or #bitcoin-otc
- I don't use linux or the gpg command line command (but I think that's what it is)
- I don't really want to understand SHA cryptology, but for some people it helps them feel safe.
Going back to read the other stuff now.
On that note, could you (or others) elaborate on what you think of the state of things around here? Do you think the current state of affairs is fine? The crypto-nerd in me wants a nice decentralized system for loans like bitcoin itself, but realistically I think that even if such a system were possible, it would probably be too cumbersome for most people. In the real world, loans are often accompanied by lots of paperwork, and I think that not having (as much of) that is considered a plus in bitcoin. My proposal puts all that back and also requires the parties to be very tech-savvy, which is probably silly. Would you be more interested in a dedicated website for loans with profiles and easy tracking of open loans and histories? It'd introduce a trusted third party in every transaction (the website admin) but we already have that here and it doesn't stop people. I'm just looking for ideas, honestly I just don't want people to get scammed and I want lenders to have low (or easily measurable, at least) risk and borrowers to pay low interest! |
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A few observations:
- I don't use IRC or #bitcoin-otc
- I don't use linux or the gpg command line command (but I think that's what it is)
- I don't really want to understand SHA cryptology, but for some people it helps them feel safe.
Going back to read the other stuff now.
Fair enough |
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Thinking this over...
Assuming everything is properly signed can you explain to me the fraud vectors that necessitate keeping the public addresses of either the borrower of lender or both private?
Sure. It boils down to the example I gave in the original proposal: if an address is public, there is nothing connecting someone sending to the address to the identity you're corresponding with. Take it to the extreme: I use one address for everything, including my loan requests. The address is in my signature and I include it on all my websites. Now when I make a loan request, two undesirable things could happen: - Two lenders simultaneously claim to have sent money to the address.
- The borrower claims that he never received the money from the lender, because a third party was also scheduled to make him a payment of the same amount at around the same time, to the same address.
A similar situation can happen for repayment to a public address: - A predatory lender has a shill borrower who claims to have made payments to the same address, so the lender can claim he never received payment from the real borrower.
- A predatory lender can claim a third party also had the address and made a payment to it of the same amount at the same time as the scheduled repayment.
In all these cases, we can use the blockchain and verify that coins were indeed received at the specified address, but we don't know who sent them. There are systems for proving you own a source address using bitcoin, but they're cumbersome and there's no easy way to access them from the standard GUI, as far as I know. The added conflict and time spent resolving issues like these make loans more risky for all parties, and should be avoided if possible. The reason I actively specify that addresses must be kept secret is that it prevents people from claiming that their buddy was also sending a scheduled payment to the same address. In the above system, if a payment reaches an address, it must be assumed to come from the counterparty. If you publicize the address you want to be receiving at, you give up the right to claim that any coins you might have received to that address were not from the counterparty you supposedly generated it for. If you insist on giving it out and then claim your counterparty didn't pay you (but your buddy Joe did), you are knowingly undermining the system and would receive negative ratings for doing so. So basically, I think that keeping addresses private not only avoids a class of misunderstandings but also aligns the parties' incentives with what is best for everyone. I might be wrong though |
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OverviewThe goal of this protocol is to: - Allow lenders to safely associate a WOT reputation with a loan request
- Allow both parties involved in a loan to give a cryptographically verifiable positive or negative rating to each other
The key guiding principles I follow in the protocol are: - All communication must be signed.
- All communication must include all prior communication to acknowledge what is said by the other party.
- All communication including bitcoin addresses must be private.
To Borrow1) The borrower prepares a roughly standardized (in the sense that it includes all relevant details; the format itself need not be standardized) document outlining sought loan terms, signed with their #bitcoin-otc WOT public key: For example: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I want 40 btc for 1 month. I will pay the lender 2 btc interest per week during the loan period and will then repay the principal in full at the end of the one-month period. Assuming I receive the loan today, here is a sample payment schedule:
2 btc on Feb 4
2 btc on Feb 11
2 btc on Feb 18
2 btc on Feb 25
40 btc on Mar 3
The overall interest rate for the month is thus 20%, or a little more if you factor in the time value of money :)
I am a reputable trader and my #bitcoin-otc WOT rating of 80 (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=copumpkin) should speak for itself.
Thank you,
copumpkin
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I generated this message by saving it to a text file, then running: gpg -u 9280FBD6 --clearsign sample-loan-request.txt
where the -u selects the key I want to use (it must match the one used on the WOT for this request to be meaningful). It is important to note that the message does not include an address to send to, because that opens a hole for disputes later. To verify the loan request, the lender must feed the complete signed message into gpg: gpg --verify sample-loan-request.txt.asc
which should reveal the keyid: gpg: Signature made Sat Jan 28 12:15:50 2012 EST using RSA key ID 9280FBD6
gpg: Good signature from "copumpkin <pumpkin@me.com>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: C275 212F 15F2 9AB8 FB97 E5F5 1AF9 2946 9280 FBD6
Note that my key (and probably many of the keys used here) will not be certified by system-trusted signatures. This is fine, as we don't care so much about external identity verification as we care about associating the loan request with a known OTC reputation. If the key is also signed by someone you know and trust, all the better, but the important part there is the key ID (9280FBD6). To verify it, you should visit http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewgpg.php?nick=copumpkin (linked from the main user rating page) and check that it matches there. In this cases it does, so you can evaluate the message according to your usual creditworthiness criteria. If I were evaluating this loan request, I'd be willing to make the loan because it has a high return but also pays small amounts at regular intervals. This should give a lender additional confidence because it means that even if something bad happens to the borrower at the end of the term, the loan isn't a complete loss to the lender. Also, money now is better than money later, if you have a choice Additionally, the prospective borrower has a good WOT reputation. Less ideally, the borrower doesn't state what the loan is for, but I'm willing to let that slide for someone with a good WOT reputation. Other lenders might have more of a problem with that. Borrowers with less of a WOT reputation should probably state their loan purpose in the original request. 2) The lender has evaluated the request and has decided to make the loan. To proceed, he takes the lender's request and includes it, signature and all, in a new message signed with his own key. He sends this message to the borrower, privately: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi copumpkin,
These terms sound good, and I am willing to lend you the coins. Please give me an address to send 40 coins to. Your payments should be sent to 18KUm7XVmZDpxchtowsT31Pv82MrBwWs7v.
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I want 40 btc for 1 month. I will pay the lender 2 btc interest per week during the loan period and will then repay the principal in full at the end of the one-month period. Assuming I receive the loan today, here is a sample payment schedule:
2 btc on Feb 4
2 btc on Feb 11
2 btc on Feb 18
2 btc on Feb 25
40 btc on Mar 3
The overall interest rate for the month is thus 20%, or a little more if you factor in the time value of money :)
I am a reputable trader and my #bitcoin-otc WOT rating of 80 (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=copumpkin) should speak for itself.
Thank you,
copumpkin
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=VZwT
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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9jN6aKabSeYFMjmbBypM
=mVMZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
The borrower checks the signature and makes sure it matches a WOT identity. The lender doesn't actually need to trust the borrower at all at this stage, but it is important to have a valid identity associated with all communication, in case there are disputes later. 3) The borrower responds, again privately, with: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Thanks! Please send coins to 16hismWmy1okSezpAab9eqnfkaYSpDVhC5. I will be paying on the schedule I wrote in the original request.
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi copumpkin,
These terms sound good, and I am willing to lend you the coins. Please give me an address to send 40 coins to. Your payments should be sent to 18KUm7XVmZDpxchtowsT31Pv82MrBwWs7v.
- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I want 40 btc for 1 month. I will pay the lender 2 btc interest per week during the loan period and will then repay the principal in full at the end of the one-month period. Assuming I receive the loan today, here is a sample payment schedule:
2 btc on Feb 4
2 btc on Feb 11
2 btc on Feb 18
2 btc on Feb 25
40 btc on Mar 3
The overall interest rate for the month is thus 20%, or a little more if you factor in the time value of money :)
I am a reputable trader and my #bitcoin-otc WOT rating of 80 (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=copumpkin) should speak for itself.
Thank you,
copumpkin
- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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- - -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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9jN6aKabSeYFMjmbBypM
=mVMZ
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJPJDdyAAoJEBr5KUaSgPvW58UP/0McUJQYyyptQ/oI5GTVcbte
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=MmV3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
4) The lender responds with: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I have sent 40 coins to 16hismWmy1okSezpAab9eqnfkaYSpDVhC5, with transaction id <blahblahblah>. Don't spend them all on candy! :)
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Thanks! Please send coins to 16hismWmy1okSezpAab9eqnfkaYSpDVhC5. I will be paying on the schedule I wrote in the original request.
- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi copumpkin,
These terms sound good, and I am willing to lend you the coins. Please give me an address to send 40 coins to. Your payments should be sent to 18KUm7XVmZDpxchtowsT31Pv82MrBwWs7v.
- - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
I want 40 btc for 1 month. I will pay the lender 2 btc interest per week during the loan period and will then repay the principal in full at the end of the one-month period. Assuming I receive the loan today, here is a sample payment schedule:
2 btc on Feb 4
2 btc on Feb 11
2 btc on Feb 18
2 btc on Feb 25
40 btc on Mar 3
The overall interest rate for the month is thus 20%, or a little more if you factor in the time value of money :)
I am a reputable trader and my #bitcoin-otc WOT rating of 80 (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=copumpkin) should speak for itself.
Thank you,
copumpkin
- - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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=VZwT
- - - -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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9jN6aKabSeYFMjmbBypM
=mVMZ
- - -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJPJDdyAAoJEBr5KUaSgPvW58UP/0McUJQYyyptQ/oI5GTVcbte
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=MmV3
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin)
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJPJDijAAoJEBr5KUaSgPvWyIEP/AkxVrAEmvvH+7jzhXPjocx3
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L5t0If9XJC7A9RZAKqay
=SYMk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
And the borrower now has some coins. There is no need to post any confirmation to the forum as both parties have proof of what the terms were, if something goes wrong. For example, if the borrower never receives the coins, he can post a transcript of the correspondence, third parties can check the signatures and also check the bitcoin network for transactions to the address (or the txid) and see that no coins were received at that address. To repayThere is no need for any GPG communication here if everything goes smoothly. The original loan agreement has all the information needed in it to verify that the repayment terms are being respected by checking the blockchain. Because the repayment address is private, only the borrower or a delegate of the borrower can send coins to that address. Because the protocol specifies that the repayment address must be private, the lender can't claim that his buddy Joe also uses that address and that the 2 btc payments we see in the blockchain were from Joe, not from the borrower, so the borrower is protected from predatory lenders. To renegotiate termsAt any point during the loan period, both the lender and the borrower can attempt to renegotiate terms, again following the convention of keeping all correspondence signed. The counterparty is free to reject an attempt at renegotiation, of course. For example, let's say that the borrower's having cashflow problems and will be unable to make his third 2 btc payment on time. He sends a signed email to the lender explaining that his dwolla transfer into mtgox will arrive in three business days and the payment will thus be three days late. The borrower responds, again including all past signed correspondence, and tells the lender that he would like an extra bitcoin of principal repayment (41 at the end) in that case. The lender reluctantly accepts in a third signed email. If shit hits the fancopumpkin the borrower warned his lender that his 3rd payment would be late, and also paid his 4th 2 btc payment late without notice and is currently 2 days late on his principal repayment. He sends copumpkin a signed email giving him a final chance to redeem himself before he gets a negative rating on the WOT and the correspondence is posted publicly. copumpkin responds and says that he is very sorry for the lateness and he was having computer and cashflow trouble. A day later, copumpkin repays his lender 42 btc. The lender might then post publicly (or privately to designated credit report collectors if we don't want public credit reporting) the full correspondence acknowledging that he has received the full amount back from copumpkin, with a discussion of lateness. It would include addresses for people to verify all payment claims, including the lender's claims that payments were late. DiscussionThis document is a lot longer than it needs to be, and is just an implementation of the basic guiding principles I outlined at the beginning, but I do hope it gives an idea of how something like this might work. The simplest approach to making this happen would be to use signed email, since the annoying parts involving signing and verifying messages (and including earlier messages) are taken care of for us. The original signed loan request could be posted publicly on the forum, then a PM could be sent over the forum to exchange email addresses, and then all further correspondence could happen over signed emails. Some people would understandably be uncomfortable exchanging emails (if unpleasantness happens, a party could get signed up for spam against their will), so in that case manually signed messages could still be exchanged through forum PMs. I can't think of any gaping holes in this system if everyone follows it correctly, but would be interested to see if anyone can think of ways in which one party could get away with screwing the other without the other party being able to prove innocence using the blockchain or signed correspondence. The system is admittedly pretty cumbersome, and might only be worthwhile for larger loans, especially considering that many forum-based lenders might not even have GPG set up or a WOT reputation. I welcome any constructive feedback I would like to extend this into a discussion of how we would like credit ratings to work, too. Swaps/insurance can come later.
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