Allow myself to introduce… myself. I’m Leon Stafford, a now likely notorious name in the P2P Bitcoin lending space.

I started out in the crypto space in 2013 as an amateur Litecoin miner, whilst living in China. Where I will end up is still to come, but I’m currently in a position of massive debt, most of which is overdue by many months and owing a lot of people.

This thread starts my activity on Bitcointalk and hope it will provide another channel for updating investors of my repayment status. Not everyone (myself included) likes Facebook or can keep up with comments on loan listings.

Right now, my current overdues amount to ~ ฿180 and $17,500 - yes, that’s a massive amount of BTC!

Where did it all go?

The majority of it has not gone into anything tangible or worthwhile - I estimate about 20 to 25 BTC worth of losses investing in other people’s loans; some lost trying to leverage $ vs ฿ and getting the unlucky movement in currency exchange; copious amounts of interest as I snowballed debts several times on already high % rates; family relocation costs as I moved countries and hastily overpaid for rent and transportation; and various web projects - trying to make $ from internet marketing and failing to get any ROI from injected funds.

All in all, I was careless - and I was careless with OPM (other people’s money).

For many years (most of my life), I’ve lived a rather high risk lifestyle. As terrible as this debt incurrence has been, it’s been enough of a wake up call for me to realize my lack of self-control, especially when it comes to budgeting and planning for the future.

Though I do see the next year as going to be quite rough in servicing debt and scraping by, I’m also grateful for the things it has helped me realize so far - that time with family does not cost anything, but is very rewarding; that growing your own vegetables is much cheaper and enjoyable; and that budgeting and catching up on bills/debt is a great feeling and something everyone should want to be an expert in (I have a long way to go!).

Though I have made some sizable overdue repayments earlier this year, it is a bit more bad news for my investors - with another repayment not expected until at least May. In addressing my cashflow and seeing how much had been wasted in renting a house which then required a car to get kids to school, I’ll be relocating to a cheaper rental that should also mitigate the need for maintaining a car.

Once relocated and a few more overdue fiat bills taken care of, I should be able to commit to a minimum regular BTC debt servicing, along with continuing with some side projects aiming to generate more $/BTC in a shorter time.

Apologies for the long post, I’ve definitely not covered enough of the past and future but welcome any questions and comments and I’ll periodically reply here.

Here are my P2P BTC lending profiles - please feel free to link to this in the comments if I do not update them first and share with any of my investors you know who would be interested in updates:

https://bitlendingclub.com/user/index/id/991/leonstafford
https://btcjam.com/users/4240

Cheers,

Leon

... and anywhere else with good asian girls food.

I've just left a year's stay in Philippines and randomly at old stomping ground of Shenzhen, China (aka Charlie and the Everything Factory).

I had my head under a rock and coming a bit late to the BTC party, but being in Shenzhen as I read about the young kid making ASICs here is kinda cool.

My passion is anything involving automation, big data, social improvement. These p2p currencies are really exciting.

Would like to meet up with some peeps from the scene here in Shenzhen or anyone who will be in HK within the next cpl weeks.