Could be $100 or $0 for all anyone knows since its future depends on so many factors including how many services grow that will accept Bitcoin, the extent of its adoption by the general public, the result of increased scrutiny by law enforcement (you can be sure that the IRS will get involved if people actually start using Bitcoin to a larger extent...), etc.

I'm down if there are still any generous souls left out there:
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Love this idea, especially that of a reputation system to weed out unreliable loanees. A website that would facilitate these loans could be quite useful in my opinion. Just my two cents.

Thanks for the replies and feedback so far. A few observations in response to several of the posts:


I'd argue that safety would be one of the biggest advantages of having a bank that would guarantee your deposits. That way if something like this (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16457.0) happened, you wouldn't be out 500 grand.

As for this quote:


I'd ask why couldn't use fractional reserves (ie: loaning out bitcoins) and make a profit that way (if, as earlier mentioned, one could figure out a way to ensure that people would pay back their loans)? And even if you didn't do that, I'd argue that there is an inherent value in having access to a large quantity of bitcoins that could lead to monetization opportunities. Hell, if enough people use the bank, one could even make a decent amount of money of advertising alone. Also, something like this would be worthwhile in my opinion, having a bank is also worthwhile just as a way to add legitimacy and stability to bitcoins that could pave the way to larger-scale adoption by the general public.

But there are obviously many, many challenges to implementing this, and I'm just thinking out loud at this stage. Any further observations and remarks are welcome.

Cheers

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum and new to the idea of Bitcoins in general. I must admit that I have some reservations about the currency (I'm hoping to eventually be swayed), but at this point I'm really excited about its potential upside if it takes off.

As someone who has just gotten into this though, I see two big problems (among others) that are stalling Bitcoin's adoption: the lack of businesses using it, and the lack of a system to get back stolen funds. As to the theft problem, I'm seeing a lot of forum posts relating to encrypting and protecting your wallet, but none of them actually guarantee that your cash is safe and reiumburse your money if its stolen like a regular fiat currency bank would, which is a problem when you have large holdings like that poor guy who lost 500 grand worth of bitcoin.

So some of my friends and I were toying with an idea: what if someone made a service that would let you deposit your bitcoins and would actually insure it in case of theft? Would that be something that would interest the Bitcoin community (especially if it would pay interest)? And what if, somewhere down the line, this bank figured out a way actually make bitcoin-denominated loans somewhere down the line (I know that's waaay easier said than done, especially having to figure out a way to get past the inherent anonymity problem of bitcoinss )