[ANN] BTCJam - Peer to Peer Bitcoin Lending

[Rassah]

Perhaps all we need is a voting system
based off bitcointalk messages
vote for someone yes or no, or just leave a specific comment
then hardline those into people's btcjam profiles
crude way but it would solve this temporary reputation problem
make users have to wait and gain a rep on bitcointalk first. (months, I know )

But this has already been implemented: that is what bitcoin-otc.com web of trust is. The ratings come into btcjam.com profiles, too.

Note how those OTC ratings are not affected by your borrowing activities on BTCJam, and there's no way to change them (or register for them) though BTCJam...

[Tulkas]

Perhaps all we need is a voting system
based off bitcointalk messages
vote for someone yes or no, or just leave a specific comment
then hardline those into people's btcjam profiles
crude way but it would solve this temporary reputation problem
make users have to wait and gain a rep on bitcointalk first. (months, I know )

But this has already been implemented: that is what bitcoin-otc.com web of trust is. The ratings come into btcjam.com profiles, too.

Note how those OTC ratings are not affected by your borrowing activities on BTCJam, and there's no way to change them (or register for them) though BTCJam...

No, the OTC ratings are updated periodically. Of course to rate the user back you must be part of the OTC system.

[Rassah]

Perhaps all we need is a voting system
based off bitcointalk messages
vote for someone yes or no, or just leave a specific comment
then hardline those into people's btcjam profiles
crude way but it would solve this temporary reputation problem
make users have to wait and gain a rep on bitcointalk first. (months, I know )

But this has already been implemented: that is what bitcoin-otc.com web of trust is. The ratings come into btcjam.com profiles, too.

Note how those OTC ratings are not affected by your borrowing activities on BTCJam, and there's no way to change them (or register for them) though BTCJam...

No, the OTC ratings are updated periodically. Of course to rate the user back you must be part of the OTC system.

I meant that a lender can't rate someone using OTC through the BTCJam website. They have to go through IRC, which I'm guessing most people have no idea how to do. Not that OTC ratings aren't refreshed. Is it possible to somehow plug OTC things into the site, so that people can do all the registering and rating using simple menus?

[gweedo]

I meant that a lender can't rate someone using OTC through the BTCJam website. They have to go through IRC, which I'm guessing most people have no idea how to do. Not that OTC ratings aren't refreshed. Is it possible to somehow plug OTC things into the site, so that people can do all the registering and rating using simple menus?

If you can't use IRC then you shouldn't be using bitcoins

[Smoovious]

I meant that a lender can't rate someone using OTC through the BTCJam website. They have to go through IRC, which I'm guessing most people have no idea how to do. Not that OTC ratings aren't refreshed. Is it possible to somehow plug OTC things into the site, so that people can do all the registering and rating using simple menus?

Not without giving your keys to BTCJam, which would defeat the purpose of being authenticated.

Tho, perhaps BTCJam could have their own OTC name, and maintain OTC ratings with other OTC-verified people, based on some non-subjective formula... like, ratio of on-time to late and missed payments through their site. How much participation a lender has.

Make it easy for the BTCJam to User rating to go down, hard to bring it back up...

Then you could have a rating from the site as a whole, not between individuals using BTCJam...

-- Smoov

[Rassah]

If you can't use IRC then you shouldn't be using bitcoins

Tell your parents or your grandparents that if they can't use IRC and figure out how to use commandline interface to control OTC, then they should be able to take out loans for anything. Only a tiny fraction of the world are computer nerds.

Not without giving your keys to BTCJam, which would defeat the purpose of being authenticated.

There's no need to give private keys, any more than the need to give it to IRC. I'm just suggesting a web interface that is actually plugged into IRC at all times, which lets you register and verify yourself using the same commands you would use on IRC, but disguised with pretty web entry text boxes with "Copy and paste the decrypted text here" instructions and such, with easy to follow ratings options after you have registered. Is that possible?

[gweedo]

If you can't use IRC then you shouldn't be using bitcoins

Tell your parents or your grandparents that if they can't use IRC and figure out how to use commandline interface to control OTC, then they should be able to take out loans for anything. Only a tiny fraction of the world are computer nerds.

It isn't rocket science, it is just GPG keys and really easy to setup, there even gui's and videos. IRC is not harder than aim or skype (which has a chat engine similar to IRC) and I see those videos all the time of old people using skype.

Not without giving your keys to BTCJam, which would defeat the purpose of being authenticated.

There's no need to give private keys, any more than the need to give it to IRC. I'm just suggesting a web interface that is actually plugged into IRC at all times, which lets you register and verify yourself using the same commands you would use on IRC, but disguised with pretty web entry text boxes with "Copy and paste the decrypted text here" instructions and such, with easy to follow ratings options after you have registered. Is that possible?

What makes this easier then logging on to IRC and following the same instructions they give you, it is legit the same thing.

[Smoovious]

Not without giving your keys to BTCJam, which would defeat the purpose of being authenticated.

There's no need to give private keys, any more than the need to give it to IRC. I'm just suggesting a web interface that is actually plugged into IRC at all times, which lets you register and verify yourself using the same commands you would use on IRC, but disguised with pretty web entry text boxes with "Copy and paste the decrypted text here" instructions and such, with easy to follow ratings options after you have registered. Is that possible?

What makes this easier then logging on to IRC and following the same instructions they give you, it is legit the same thing.

I suspect the 'difficult' part amounts to using the device with 104 buttons on it instead of the device with 2 buttons and a wheel... .. .

(SO MANY BUTTONS!! AARRGGHH!!!!!)

-- Smoov

[Rassah]

What makes this easier then logging on to IRC and following the same instructions they give you, it is legit the same thing.

GPG has easy to use GUI, yes, but not OTC.

Compare

Please enter your GPG key ID
... (retrieves name/etc information from mit.gpg.edu) ...
Please verify this identity by decrypting this string and entering it into the box below

VERSUS

Join Freenode IRC. Use the /join command to join the #bitcoin-otc chatroom. Message gribble privately. Follow these instructions
Note: if you have already registered using Bitcoin address authentication, use the 'echangekey' command to add a GPG key to your account.
To register the key, you will create an account with the bot with the gpg eregister command. The command takes the following arguments:
nick: your username in the bot's GPG database. It doesn't have to be the same as your irc nick, nor does it have to have any relationship to the name on your GPG key. For convenience, most people choose their IRC nick here.
keyid: your 16-digit gpg key id of your pubkey (the last 16 digits of your key fingerprint).
keyserver: optional, specify a keyserver from where the bot can retrieve your public key. If nothing is provided here, bot will by default try retrieving from subset.pool.sks-keyservers.net and pgp.mit.edu.
By default, gpg --list-keys returns 8-digit ID's. You can find your 16-digit gpg key id by running:
gpg --list-keys --keyid-format long
You should see a line similar to
pub   2048R/81898844A1BF37D6 2011-03-06
where 81898844A1BF37D6 is the key ID that the bot needs.
So you might run the following, on IRC, to register with the bot:
;;gpg eregister BobJones 81898844A1BF37D6

Or how about

To verify your login, please copy and decrypt this string using your GPG software, and paste the decrypted string in the box below
Now that you have registered, you can go to any BTCJam user's page, read their OTC ratings, and add your own just by clicking the "Rate User" button, selecting -10 through +10, and entering comments in a box.

VERSUS

GPG authentication

If you have already registered (see section above) you do not need to register again, instead just use the gpg eauth command, and supply it with your registered username as the only argument. For example:
;;gpg eauth BobJones
Now complete your authentication by decrypting your one time password.
One time password

The bot will respond to your registration/authentication request with a URL pointing to an encrypted document containing your one time password (OTP).
<gribble> Request successful for user <yourname>. Get your encrypted OTP from http://bitcoin-otc.com/otps/665FC11DD53E9583
Your task now is to decrypt the message. Visit the link provided, copy the encrypted message (the entire content of the page - so using keyboard shortcuts, you could hit Control-A, to select all, then Control-C, to copy), then run "gpg --decrypt" command (yes, actually press enter to run the command, before pasting the encrypted message) and paste in the encrypted message. If gpg prompts you for your passphrase, type it in and press enter.
At this point, if you are on Linux, press Control-D to terminate input. If on windows, press Enter, Control-Z, Enter to terminate input. Gpg will spit out the decrypted OTP. It will look something like this:
freenode:#bitcoin-otc:6132ffd1c3c4468e40303d844f3e30661bc34617054f7cc5e3fa03c8b41c376e
Now, supply the OTP to the bot through the gpg everify command. Example:
;;gpg everify freenode:#bitcoin-otc:6132ffd1c3c4468e40303d844f3e30661bc34617054f7cc5e3fa03c8b41c376


Rating Command index
Here's an index of commands relating to the OTC rating system. You can get more info about the arguments they take using the 'help' command with the bot.
rate: Enter a rating for a user. Note that new ratings replace old ones, only one trust level exists between any two users.
unrate: Remove your trust rating for a user.
rated: Show your rating for a user.
getrating: Show cumulative ratings that a person received from everyone else.
gettrust: Show the cumulative trust for a person coming from people that you trust directly, capped by how much you trust them. For example, if you trust userA at 5, and userA trusts userB at 7, your second level trust for userB is 5 (minimum of l1 and l2 trust links). These are summed across all second-level links. This is arguably a more reliable metric than the global 'getrating' result. You can also request the second-level trust from the point of view of any other user - useful if you yourself are not well connected in the WoT.

It's way too much to read even just to figure out what the hell you have to do. Want proof? Check how many people are registered with OTC on BTCJam or localbitcoins. It's easy for some of us, but there's definitely a need to make this simpler.

[gweedo]

There are scripts that make it easily I have one, that i use. But honestly if I had to do that manually each time it isn't that much harder, yes it is a lot of reading but it is teaching your a process that keeps your identity safe and secure.

[420]

honestly, tell me how to otc irc in three sentences consisting of less than 30 words each

[gweedo]

honestly, tell me how to otc irc in three sentences consisting of less than 30 words each

Ok use ;;auth <username> command to login you get a challenge clearsign it then put it in pastebin, pass raw url using verify.
To rate use ;;rate <username> <rating> <reason>.

Those are really the only commands you need.

[ffcitatos]

hen you could have a rating from the site as a whole, not between individuals using BTCJam...

This sounds good! Maybe a feature that should be implemented after the loan collection thingy

[8668]

Has anyone else noticed that out of the 50 or so Loan Listings, only about 1 looks halfway legit?

[420]

Has anyone else noticed that out of the 50 or so Loan Listings, only about 1 looks halfway legit?

nope. cuz i stopped going to the website

[sega01]

Hi BTCJam developers!

As I've said before, I really like the site. I think BTCJam is a great concept with potential to do good things for people.

However, it does have a problem. Not a problem of its own doing, but the people around it. The site is filled with scammers. I believe I've lost over 100BTC to scammers. I know, it's not your fault. It's my own judgement, and I fully understand it is not your responsibility to prevent such losses. Even being very careful, I sometimes see no other way to confirm legitimacy of loans. Take for instance my last loan, which I thought for sure was a safe bet. It was for a taxi company in Corpus Christi, with pictures of signs about the BTCJam loan and everything. From the deactivated phone numbers, it appears the owner took one last stab at getting money, by going to BTCJam and asking for a loan. Though I have no proof, it seems to me the company has shut down after taking both my money, and the rest of the investors for this loan.

http://yellowcabtexas.com/btcjam
https://btcjam.com/listings/516

Eventually, if even investors taking prudent steps to be careful is not enough, no investors will use the site. Loans in need of funds without investors will not do anyone any good, and BTCJam may lose a significant amount of activity.

I'm not certain this will fix everything, but I propose two things to improve the situation.

1. BTCJam profits should come not from funded loans, but from loan payments. At present, I could be wrong, but I believe you are taking 1% of all funded loans. Even from scams, which seems to be most of the loans. I would personally feel as an investor that I am being taken more seriously if you win or lose, just like I do. Even if the lower income means you have to take 2... or even maybe 3%, I'm okay with that. I feel uneasy about you profiting when we investors are scammed.

2. If a loan is overdue for more than a certain amount of time, all information in the account should be turned over to the investors. Unless you have something in place for collections, I feel the community at large can work well for this. This can be added into the terms of agreement, and frankly, may make those dishonestly asking for loans think twice. Right now it appears to me that the information on all of the scammers is just sitting idly, rather than actively being used to crack down on the scammers. I wouldn't mind if the loan page turned into a community thread of all of  the investors for catching the scammer. Otherwise, more of them stay circling around not being caught, risking not only other BTCJam users, bit the Bitcoin community on the whole. This means those ID pictures, bills, credit score checks, and every bit they have in your database should really go to us, the investors. That user is indebted to us, and we need that information to collect from them.

All of that said, BTCJam is a great site in concept. What it is today, is  unfortunately a scammer haven. I have had the pleasure of working with several users on excellent loans with good returns, but the vast majority have been scammers. So now the good loans and responsible users out there are ignored because the scam risk is so great.

I am not claiming that my advice is gold or will work perfectly for you guys by any means. However, I do ask for a more active discussion on how we can solve these issues together.

Thank you,
Teran

[Monster Tent]

Someone should make a site where you can list defaulted loans and local "hitmen" can collect for a cut.

[ercolinux]

Someone should make a site where you can list defaulted loans and local "hitmen" can collect for a cut.

That's can work!

[Monster Tent]

Someone should make a site where you can list defaulted loans and local "hitmen" can collect for a cut.

That's can work!

p2p kneecapping.

[Shermo]

PLEASE RE-READ THIS ENTIRE THREAD YOU WILL GET YOUR ANSWER

I'm starting to think you just enjoy coming in this thread and winding people up, if you had read this entire thread yourself as you've told others too MANY times then you would in fact know that Tulkas has mentioned several times that he's been looking into ways to recover defaulted debts. In fact below is his last response on the matter, where he said he would have something to tell us in roughly 2 weeks... although that was about 5 weeks ago now.

There is any news on a system to obtain back some of the money from the scammer, or at least have a part of their debt repayed?

We will have news soon (in two weeks aprox).  Sorry, can't tell you more right now.