[ANN] BTCJam - Peer to Peer Bitcoin Lending

[Rassah]

Some things simply need regulation.

Most of the "loans" I gave on btcjam were simply never repaid and the only inconvenience for the user is that they have a username on a website which has a bad record. Obviously when they open a new account on btcjam with a new username they can repeat the process.

If I has leant this money on a fiat lending site, zopa.com etc they would seek to recoop the defaulted loan - the risks of borrowing money.

As an investor, it is your job to evaluate the risks and chose what loans you should and should not pick. Since there was no mandatory arbitration before, it would have been best to ask the borrowers for more info about their loans and about themselves before giving them money. Without that info, the loans are incredibly risky. I don't know if you will ever see your money, but, sadly, I doubt it. I am sure it has been a very expensive lesson on risk evaluation, though.

[gaston909]

A lesson on BS mainly. I did ask questions, seemed legit to me....

I regret putting my trust in people I hadnt met in person...

[Rassah]

A lesson on BS mainly. I did ask questions, seemed legit to me....

I regret putting my trust in people I hadnt met in person...

I am hoping to convince BTCJam to use a slightly different lending model, and hoping they'll give me access to their back side, so I can use my financial expertise to help evaluate the loans and such.

[Tulkas]

Some things simply need regulation.

Most of the "loans" I gave on btcjam were simply never repaid and the only inconvenience for the user is that they have a username on a website which has a bad record. Obviously when they open a new account on btcjam with a new username they can repeat the process.

If I has leant this money on a fiat lending site, zopa.com etc they would seek to recoop the defaulted loan - the risks of borrowing money.

Will I ever see my BTC returned? It is a considerable amount of money.

They cannot repeat since we do not allow anonymous loans.

And yes, after 120 days loans will be subjected to arbitration and identity disclosure so investors can seek collection. Just like any other p2p lending site.

[gappie]

The GPG authentication on the site seems to be not working for the OTC rating import. I get the following error message "Error retrieving gpg keyid."

[tencevad]

Is there any way to refresh imported OTC ratings? My OTC ratings have changed significantly since I first got started and it would be helpful to reflect that in my record.

[Vezunchik]

Is there any options to get bitcoins for advertising your service in my signature?

[modcom]

This site is built for scammers and thieves. The Dev doesn't even care to respond to this thread any longer. A month with no answers or updates?

The site is overrun with liars and the lenders take all the hits. Recourse against a bad debtor is non-existent. Multiple Scam loans from individuals goes unchecked and is so rampant that supposedly good borrowers are now unable to pay their loans making them scammers as well.

I would suggest everyone boycott this site due to its Scam nature.

Congratulations Dev for building, supporting and maintaining a criminal venture. You are no better then the rest of the scammers out there.

[RandomQ]

Possible Bug Report, or was this done by design?

on the Note Marketplace, it is listing repaid loans for sale

Why is there any value for a loan that has no balance? you will not receive any payments

If this was done by design, was the intent to let other users scam each other?

I've purchased one of this repaid notes to see if it does in fact transfer the note and it does

[boonies4u]

The ability to list repaid notes has no purpose and should be removed. I hope no one is foolish enough to fall for this, but it shouldn't be able to happen in the first place.

[Tulkas]

Possible Bug Report, or was this done by design?

on the Note Marketplace, it is listing repaid loans for sale

Why is there any value for a loan that has no balance? you will not receive any payments

If this was done by design, was the intent to let other users scam each other?

I've purchased one of this repaid notes to see if it does in fact transfer the note and it does

This is a bug, thanks, i will correct that.

[Vezunchik]

Please tell me what are you doing to get back my money stolen by:

Code:

ThePiecemaker
https://btcjam.com/users/4995
Capital Investment Gains LLC
https://btcjam.com/users/5161
(User #4884)
https://btcjam.com/users/4884
Dodger888
https://btcjam.com/users/4609

From investor Vezunchik.

If nothing, than I can't do nothing but to become a scammer too. And return money from fake loans...

[supermono]

Vezunchik, if some of your money was stolen by four BTCJam users, and you don't consider it a safe place to invest money, then you might want to consider changing the line in your signature that says that BTCJam is "cheaper and safer than any bank". Some newbies might see your signature and invest in BTCJam loans without realizing the risks or the default rates. Or is your signature comparing BTCJam with a particular subset of banks, such as the banks in Cyprus? In that case, you might want to reword it to something more specific, like "BTCJam -- it's cheaper and safer than depositing your money in Cyprus, Syrian, and North Korean banks".

P.S. I lost a lot of money in BTCJam too, so I understand how you feel. But you should not think that your only option is to become a scammer too. You always have different options you can consider, and choices to make. There are ways to make this experience at least a partially positive one. For example, you may be able to get the borrower information from BTCJam and pursue legal action against them. You can look for patterns in the defaulted loans, and make changes to your investing style to try to reduce the probability of future losses (such as not investing in 'reputation loans', which tend to be the highest-risk loans on BTCJam, or avoiding loans which promise to pay a very high rate of interest (like promising to double your money within 7 days). Or you can switch to investing only in secured loans (which, by the way, still does not guarantee that the borrowers won't default, but it should guarantee you recover at least part of your investment when/if they do so, depending on the value of the assets used as collatoral at that time), or you can choose to stop using BTCJam altogether, and you can be happy that you did not lose more money. Frankly, most users of BTCJam are relatively new users; the majority of people discover BTCJam, think it will be a good way to make a lot of money, then (understandably) quit after one or two months, when they see that an average of about 1 of every 4 loans goes bad, and that their profit on the good loans is less than their losses on the bad loans, and that they are losing money overall. Most of the original group of BTCJam investors stopped using BTCJam around November or December of last year because they were losing money from unpaid loans (you can read their comments earlier in this thread). BTCJam is still alive mainly because new users are always signing up, who aren't fully aware of all of the risks in making these loans, or who underestimate what percentage of their loans are going to be unpaid, or who think that the problems with unpaid loans in the past have been solved. BTCJam did recently add a clause for mandatory arbitration of loans activated after March 30, which might allow investors in loans since then to recover part of their investment, but I think the loan will have to officially default (be unpaid for 120 days) before it can be submitted to arbitration. So, it will be early August before we see how well this new binding arbitration really works. Until August, I suggest that all investors be very cautious in making loans, particularly to borrowers that they don't know.

[Tulkas]

About arbitration, we have good news, the wait time will be reduced to 90 days, we cannot reduce it further because we have to give legitimate borrowers the time to recover from unexpected events.

About scammers, we have a repayment rate above 70%, the number still low mostly because of the old loans from the time arbitration was not in place, we expect the repayment rate start to go up from now on.

 

[sal002]

About arbitration, we have good news, the wait time will be reduced to 90 days, we cannot reduce it further because we have to give legitimate borrowers the time to recover from unexpected events.

About scammers, we have a repayment rate above 70%, the number still low mostly because of the old loans from the time arbitration was not in place, we expect the repayment rate start to go up from now on.

 

Can you break that repayment rate down by loan type or any other characteristic?  My repayment rate is 0, but just may be the types of loans I pick.   Plus, any stats about arbitration now that I assume at least one loan has defaulted since the change.

[gotpetum]

Quick question...

I recently got paid back .11 for a .1 loan. Yay!

I withdrew the money, but it only sent .105 to my wallet and kept .005 in my account.

Why couldn't I withdraw all of the money?

Thanks!

Edit: When I was eligible to make another withdraw request, I got a useful error message, and google let me to the answer. Something about reserving .005 to cover transfer fees...

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Actual TX fees are 0 to 0.0002 or so now.

[Tulkas]

Actual TX fees are 0 to 0.0002 or so now.

No, this is not true. The fee depends on the block size. The remaining of the bitcoins are not kept by BTCJam BTW, it will remain in your account and we can send it to you if you need.

[Tulkas]

Relevant news here!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244638.msg2593465#msg2593465

[sal002]

Are you 100% on the "unappealable" nature of arbitration?  That seems to run contrary to US law, but if your attorneys said that was the case then it just may be.