[ANN] BTCJam - Peer to Peer Bitcoin Lending

[creativex]

Well the last borrower I had that was still paying has gone missing. I have one payment remaining on my own loan and then I'm wiping all traces of btcjam from my systems, this has been an expensive lesson in currency volatility and still people seem to be funding unsecured loans.

Stop with your FUD, I only fund unsecured loans cause I can assume risk, and I interview and actually talk to the people and research. So goodbye little kid, and let the big boys make make there money.

You must be dumb as a rock. The site admin just acknowledged a HUGE problem when he demonstrated a global drop in repayments of 1.4% over less than two weeks. Who's spreading FUD?

There are posters on several threads that acknowledge they've defaulted because they cannot afford to buy the coins to repay. Please follow these simple directions.

1) Think
2) Speak

When you reverse these steps stupid stuff comes out.

So Yeah I am clearly the dumb one, yet I don't have an expensive loan cause I thought bitcoin didn't have any volatility. Plus I didn't spread FUD, 1.4% of unpaid loans in a small community doesn't mean anything. Stop with your armchair lending and let the big whales take over for now

All yours sir egomaniac. You can have the entire site.

There are some dietary supplements that can help with that whale problem btw.

[filharvey]

Well from all the loans I've funded, it is now upto 13 missed payments on loans from 14 possible. This is just getting worse. I have a loan on btcjam, and paid back the first installment early and will do on all the rest, but kind of makes me pissed, that I'm the only one who is trying to pay back a loan.

Phil

[creativex]

Well from all the loans I've funded, it is now upto 13 missed payments on loans from 14 possible. This is just getting worse. I have a loan on btcjam, and paid back the first installment early and will do on all the rest, but kind of makes me pissed, that I'm the only one who is trying to pay back a loan.

Phil

Kinda hoping that now that Bitcoin has been hit with Gox2 The Redux we'll see some of the defaulters buying coins and repaying their defaulted loans. That'd put a thin sugar coating on the sh1t sandwich the Goxtards have served everyone.

[BurtW]

Well from all the loans I've funded, it is now upto 13 missed payments on loans from 14 possible. This is just getting worse. I have a loan on btcjam, and paid back the first installment early and will do on all the rest, but kind of makes me pissed, that I'm the only one who is trying to pay back a loan.

Phil

Yes, even all the "good" loans have all gone "bad", there are no good loans anymore.  However, some of these folks that are late did themselves a big favor by being late and can now repay at a much better price so I expect some of the late payments should start coming in.  I hope.

[sal002]

and paid back the first installment early

Did it impact your payments at all and interest rate calcs) by paying it back early?  I may have missed an option on my loan set-up, but my loan calcs interest the same regardless of when the payments are made.

[filharvey]

and paid back the first installment early

Did it impact your payments at all and interest rate calcs) by paying it back early?  I may have missed an option on my loan set-up, but my loan calcs interest the same regardless of when the payments are made.

Nope payments are still the same for all the other dates.

Phil

[sal002]

I suspect BTCJam will have a collectability issue if it keeps referring to interest, unless it states there is a pre-payment penalty or that interest is really a fee and not interest.  I believe on other Peer loan platforms, early payments decreases the actual interest that accrues (as it should since less principle is outstanding over time).

[squall1066]

@ BTCjam, I have lost all future payment in my account overview and I am not owed anything more from anyone, It says I have no outstanding debt, Or any markers on the calender past 20th April, I hope this is a bug, Please write back to me A.S.A.P. Thank you.

[Tulkas]

@ BTCjam, I have lost all future payment in my account overview and I am not owed anything more from anyone, It says I have no outstanding debt, Or any markers on the calender past 20th April, I hope this is a bug, Please write back to me A.S.A.P. Thank you.

PM sent.

[squall1066]

@ BTCjam, I have lost all future payment in my account overview and I am not owed anything more from anyone, It says I have no outstanding debt, Or any markers on the calender past 20th April, I hope this is a bug, Please write back to me A.S.A.P. Thank you.

PM sent.

Looks like a hack attempt from a new feature, I have posted elsewhere on the forum for people to check their accounts.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175701.0

I urge Talkas to either do e-mail verification or 2PA.

We are working together to get these sales reverted, as yet I cant see anything, I will update.


EDIT - Update, Everything has been moved back, I shall rotate my passwords more often now, He said he is implementing a 2PA soon, outlook good! Thanks.

[Tulkas]

@ BTCjam, I have lost all future payment in my account overview and I am not owed anything more from anyone, It says I have no outstanding debt, Or any markers on the calender past 20th April, I hope this is a bug, Please write back to me A.S.A.P. Thank you.

PM sent.

Looks like a hack attempt from a new feature, I have posted elsewhere on the forum for people to check their accounts.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175701.0

I urge Talkas to either do e-mail verification or 2PA.

We are working together to get these sales reverted, as yet I cant see anything, I will update.


EDIT - Update, Everything has been moved back, I shall rotate my passwords more often now, He said he is implementing a 2PA soon, outlook good! Thanks.

Just to make things clear, BTCJam was not hacked!
The user had his password compromised.

We will add two factor authentication soon, but remember to take good care of your passwords!

[Vod]

Tulkas - please do not allow users to delete loan requests and have the page redirect to a 404.

This allows scammers to hide their tracks by deleting old loans that do not fund.

I believe you should keep the loan details up, but just mark the loan as "closed" or "deleted".

[Smoovious]

Tulkas - please do not allow users to delete loan requests and have the page redirect to a 404.

This allows scammers to hide their tracks by deleting old loans that do not fund.

I believe you should keep the loan details up, but just mark the loan as "closed" or "deleted".

perhaps "delisted" would be a better tag

-- Smoov

[Rassah]

I suspect BTCJam will have a collectability issue if it keeps referring to interest, unless it states there is a pre-payment penalty or that interest is really a fee and not interest.  I believe on other Peer loan platforms, early payments decreases the actual interest that accrues (as it should since less principle is outstanding over time).

Yeah, you can't really call it interest at that point, since you can't really charge that amount if you are not owed it.

[sal002]

Yeah, you can't really call it interest at that point, since you can't really charge that amount if you are not owed it.

I appreciate all the changes BTCJam, but if they want to move into the real world of collections, transparency is going to be the key.  The incorrect interest calcs, plus the inability to see what payments were made and when as well as the impact on principal and interest is a HUGE problem for this site.  I may sound like a broken record, but in the meantime BTCJam is opening itself up a large potential issue that can EASILY be avoided thru transparency.

[Tulkas]

Yeah, you can't really call it interest at that point, since you can't really charge that amount if you are not owed it.

I appreciate all the changes BTCJam, but if they want to move into the real world of collections, transparency is going to be the key.  The incorrect interest calcs, plus the inability to see what payments were made and when as well as the impact on principal and interest is a HUGE problem for this site.  I may sound like a broken record, but in the meantime BTCJam is opening itself up a large potential issue that can EASILY be avoided thru transparency.

We are totally transparent, the interest calc is correct, the only issue is that you want to discount the interest rate in case of early payments and we do not do that.

We can implement that feature, some institutions do not allow early payments, others charge a penalty because it lowers the roi of investors and some allow it, it's really a matter of choice. You can submit this feature request at our uservoice feedback widget, perhaps we can make this optional and let the borrower choose, since it will affect investor returns.

[sal002]

Maybe I am missing where the functionality is that allows me to see the payments I have made, the interest portion of that payment and the portion allocated to principal.  Your system physically allows early payments so perhaps you want to disable that until the calculated interest is adjusted accordingly. 

As I have mentioned before, it is not an interest rate discount, but a calculation that takes into account the time value of money. Easiest example is this - 1.00 with a interest rate of 10% per day.  If I pay you in full on day 1, I will pay owe $1.10 (and owe nothing more).  If I pay you on day 2, I will owe you $1.21.  Same interest rate, but waiting longer allows the interest to accrue.  On day 1, the principal paid back is $1.00 and interest is $0.10.  On day 2, the interest went up to $0.21 (assuming daily compounding).  In other words, earlier payments decrease the accumulation of interest even though the rate stays the same. BTCJam does not account for this nor does it have terms that prohibit early payments.  This is a large problem and means many people that paid loans there potentially overpaid.

I'll leave aside my issue that my amortization calculator does not match yours, but hopefully when I find the section that shows me my past payments (anyone else see this on the site?), I can see the error of my spreadsheet.

[Rassah]

We are totally transparent, the interest calc is correct, the only issue is that you want to discount the interest rate in case of early payments and we do not do that.

We can implement that feature, some institutions do not allow early payments, others charge a penalty because it lowers the roi of investors and some allow it, it's really a matter of choice. You can submit this feature request at our uservoice feedback widget, perhaps we can make this optional and let the borrower choose, since it will affect investor returns.

You should implement that feature as default, or at least give a big warning that interest is calculated per pay period, as opposed to daily, and thus paying early will not change the interest owed. The reason is because that's not really ROI any more, since the investment part was returned. The idea is that when someone pays early, you can put that money into another loan and maintain your ROI with a new investment, as opposed to getting extra return from someone who pre-paid.

[sal002]

I know you are implementing collections and more legal enforce-ability.  You may want to engage an attorney in various jurisdictions to see the default rules on loans and applicable usuary laws.  Right now, I suspect not saying you can't prepay and allowing people to prepay effectively allows prepayment and thus should impact the interest calculations.  Thus a lot of people may have overpaid.  However, I could be wrong.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

CoinLenders solves this issue by paying interest on deposits. So if you have the coins earlier, then you can simply park it in your account and you will pay less interest (depending on the interest rate for your loan).