[ANN] BTCJam - Peer to Peer Bitcoin Lending

[pentix]

Tulkas i would like a a little explanation of how loans tied to MtGoxUSD works

briefly --> you have a loan for 1btc.  if mtgoxusd goes up $X amount, you only have to pay 0.9btc after interest.  if mtgoxusd goes down, you have to pay 1.1btc.

for the bower, you are paying back the same dollar value, for the lender, you are getting the dollar value you lent plus interest.

[Tulkas]

Bug Report

You can't sell a note for more than the investment value

I wanted to buy some of my own notes and make sure that people I'm selling my note did not lose any money IE the 4% note FEE


Feature Request

Be able to offer note owners,a buyout offer on a note

It's really hard to please everyone. I've been accused of being a scammer for allowing people sell notes for a greater value than the amount pending.

Will think about the buyout.

[Mooshire]

I wish that there weren't scammers in this world

[RandomQ]

bug report 1

You Can pay Loans out of Order You can pay a future loan Payment Before you the current loan payment

I wanted to test this with my loan that has a payment late



bug report 2

When your loan is late on a payment certain features are restricted
*Withdrawing
*Investing in new notes

But you can still Buy notes, I would like this feature restricted to only buy your own Notes

Bug Report 3

Not being able to sell a note for more than was invested

I wanted to buy a note issued from my loan for more than face value
I pm the person holding the note to add 5% above face value for the note, and I would buy it
But it wouldnt let him list it for more than face value


Bug Report 4

You should not let payments be made when the MtGox quote is over 1 HR Old

Currently the MtGox pricing is 7 HR Old

[pentix]

"You can't make comments while blacklisted."

umm, what?  why?

[wolverine.ks]

any chance of implementing 2fa?

[wolverine.ks]

There is a section on BTCJam called 'Bitcoin Investment Plans'.

Is that still being developed? Is there more information on that in a faq somewhere? Also, there is a typo on that page. Comming -> Coming.

Im guessing its an auto-invest feature based on the same/similar filters used in the browse listings section.
e.g. If my account has enough money, invest in all loans with >50% secured, a BTCJam Rep >14, and >4 User Identity Verifications...or something like that.

If thats not what it is, then consider this a feature request.

[FeedbackLoop]

What is this talk of loans before 30 / 3 not going to arbitration? That is contrary to what was stated in the website when people made the loans.

Also could you please correct the bug with the phone verification or increase the number of tries from 4? Thank you!

[supermono]

This morning I received the official 'arbitration awards' certifying that two people officially owe me BTC from overdue loans (which I already knew before, although I suppose it is nice that it is official now, and good to have the people's identities).

Three questions for Tulkas:

1) How do I convert this official piece of paper into actual recovered bitcoins in my wallet? Do I need to send a copy of the arbitration award to some legal entity somewhere?

2) Now that I have been officially given the debtors' identity information as part of the arbitration process, can I contact them without violating BTCJam's Terms of Service?

3) One of these two loans was a secured loan. When will the collateral be sold and the proceeds distributed to investors? When this happens, will we receive an updated arbitration notice listing the total that the debtor still owes us after selling the collateral?

Thank you!

[pentix]

could someone explain what happens when a loan goes to arbitration for both parties involved.

[supermono]

I don't know what happens from the borrower point of view. But this has been my recent experience as an investor:

1) Receive an email which tells you that in 14 days, so-and-so loan will be 90 days overdue and will be going to arbitration and that you will be informed of the results

2) 14 days later, receive another email with a "binding arbitration award" in Adobe PDF format which looks like this (where I put XXXXX, that will have the actual information in your particular case):

net-ARB Binding Arbitration Award
Case No. XXXXX

{ XXXXX } the "Creditor"
vs.
{ XXXXX } the "Debtor"

Findings:
1. "Bitcoins" are a decentralized, peer-to-peer unit of currency gaining popularity on the Internet.
2. Using the website www.BTCjam.com, the Debtor entered into a loan agreement (BTCjam Loan No.
XXXXX) with the Creditor for a bitcoin loan in the amount of XXXXX bitcoins at XXXXX% interest
monthly.
3. The Debtor's name, last known address, and other information is:
XXXXX
4. The Debtor was required to make monthly loan payments to the Creditor but has failed to make a
payment for at least the past 94 days. The Debtor is in default.
5. The amount owed at the time the debtor stopped making payments is XXXXX bitcoins and is
immediately due and payable to:
XXXXX
BTCjam Member No. XXXXX

Arbitrated by net-ARB, Inc.
www.net-ARB.com
August XXXXX, 2013
/Marty Lavine/
CEO, net-ARB, Inc.

3) Post a message here asking Tulkas how you can convert this piece of paper into recovered bitcoins

4) Wait almost a week and still not receive any response from Tulkas

5) Wonder when/if Tulkas will respond; meanwhile, try to answer other people's questions as well as you can, since they will probably receive no answer from customer support

The arbitration award document will include the borrower's full name and address information (assuming that the borrower verified both of those with BTCJam), as well as email address, facebook page, and/or other identity information that BTCJam may have on the borrower; between this information and the official 'binding arbitration' award, I suspect investors may be able to file paperwork with local courts to try to collect the debt, or could contact the borrower directly to request repayment, but I don't know if any kind of official process or procedure has been worked out. Since BTCJam normally does not want investors to initiate collection efforts themselves, we need clarification from BTCJam as to whether they are going to take some action once the arbitration award has been issued to actually collect the debt, or if investors are basically on their own to take the arbitration award and use it to do their own collection efforts. If BTCJam is not going to actually use the arbitration award for any kind of collection efforts, and if they will not authorize investors to use the award to initiate their own collection efforts, then the award does not seem particularly useful. This is why BTCJam needs to establish some policies for what can/will happen after the arbitration award is issued, and clearly articulate them here and on the website, instead of us having to answer each other's questions with the limited partial information we have.

[jamh]

Same boat, have 5 arbitration awards. Now what?

[xmrk2]

it seems that btcjam primarily forbids direct confrontation with borrowers, knocking on their doors and shouting "pay or else ...", and the like:

Lenders may not post pestering or threatening messages on any listing.

So the focus seems to be on extra-legal methods, it would be strange to ban legal methods.

Another point is, that you have already won the arbitration, which I guess supersedes the rules for lenders. In other words, I would argue that arbitrator has (or should have) taken rules for lenders into account.

Yet another point could be lack of cooperation and explanation from btcjam.com.

For enforcement, see http://net-arb.com/FAQ.php#Enforcement .

[Snipes777]

Well that's awesome. So in order to protect myself, I invested in .1 bitcoin increments over many, many loans. Now I get settlements for around $10 equivalent and in order to enforce those in court I need to spend $35. Best plan ever.

[Rassah]

Well that's awesome. So in order to protect myself, I invested in .1 bitcoin increments over many, many loans. Now I get settlements for around $10 equivalent and in order to enforce those in court I need to spend $35. Best plan ever.

Or maybe you could post that information publicly, and someone maybe will start to aggregate people's public names, addresses, and debts owed into some sort of public reputation database, and then no one else will deal with those people again, until they settle any issues with you?

[AlexC]

When I try to add a comment to a loan I keep getting a 'You are already signed in.' message, but I don't get to make the comment. Anybody else seeing this?

/AlexC

[AlexC]

When I try to add a comment to a loan I keep getting a 'You are already signed in.' message, but I don't get to make the comment. Anybody else seeing this?

/AlexC

Is this due to a feature that prohibits you from making two comments to a loan right after each other?

[wolverine.ks]

anyone else concerned that BTCJam doesnt use 2fa? im not a programmer, is this difficult? Shouldn't all websites with user accounts implement 2fa? I'd be willing to let it slide for a little while, but this is quickly becoming a dealbreaker for me...
thoughts?

[supermono]

anyone else concerned that BTCJam doesnt use 2fa? im not a programmer, is this difficult? Shouldn't all websites with user accounts implement 2fa? I'd be willing to let it slide for a little while, but this is quickly becoming a dealbreaker for me...
thoughts?

I would love to see 2fa added (since I don't have a Smartphone, my vote would be for Yubikey, or for the option of using either Yubikey or Google Authenticator).

Personally, though, I don't have many BTC in BTCJam at the moment, so my biggest concern at the moment isn't a hacker stealing the very small amount of BTC that I still have left in the site. Back in the fall (when BTC were around $10 each), I bought 30 BTC and invested them in the site, but a high default rate on my 'investments' month after month meant that by March 30 when they started requiring borrowers to agree to arbitration, I was already down to less than 2 BTC remaining in loans that were still good. (I have kicked myself many times for not having just kept my 30 BTC instead of trying to 'invest' them!) Since then, I have continued to reinvest bitcents as they have come in in the form of loan payments, but I am not putting new money into my account until it seems that the two biggest problems have been addressed: 1) nonresponsive customer service; and 2) users not paying back their loans.

This summer, I was hopeful that the announced binding arbitration meant that the collections issue was finally being addressed. But the euphoria began to wear off shortly after I got my first two binding arbitration awards on August 12. I got the email with the PDF showing that one guy owes me 0.009 bitcoins, and the other owes me 1.086 bitcoins. I didn't attempt to email customer service, because they have never responded to me before, but I posted here on August 19, asking Tulkas what the next step is in terms of collection, if BTCJam is going to submit the binding arbitration awards to a court on our behalf, or if we have the green light to use the binding arbitration awards to go ahead with our own collections (since BTCJam in their terms of service specifically prohibits lenders from making collections efforts themselves). It is now September 7 and I am still awaiting a response. It seems either they don't bother reponding, or they haven't worked out what the next steps should be themselves yet.

Worse, the 1.086 bitcoin debt was a secured loan, secured with shares of Asicminer-PT. At the time the binding arbitration award was issued, the loan was around 96% secured, meaning if they had sold the collateral then, I would have gotten most of my money back. Since then, Asicminer has crashed, and the loan is now only 54% secured. The question of when the collateral would be sold was my other question in my August 19 post that Tulkas has ignored; it seems that either they are very disorganized and not consistently promptly following up on selling the collateral on the defaulted secured loans, or they find it advantageous to earn as many dividends as possible on the collateral prior to selling it (dividends that should belong to investors, since it is our money that is being frozen in the bad secured loan). If they have some fixed policy of selling the collateral after x number of days, that's one thing, but the lack of transparency and responsiveness here concerns me. It doesn't seem like there has been a lot of planning; "você inventa" may be a nice theme for a Tom Zé song, but just dealing with things as they come up (or, worse, not dealing with them) doesn't work well in finance.

When I first started using BTCJam, I was thrilled with the concept. I still think it is a great concept, but it will not be successful until they improve their customer service, and put clear procedures in place to address the bad loans and collections. On the other hand, it seems that the majority of focus of the developers has been on the technology. I loved it when they added secured loans, MtGox-linked loans, and verification of borrowers' paypal and ebay accounts, as well as the 'invested' label so that I could clearly see which loans I had already invested in. I see the developers continuing to make continuing changes to the technology side of things, such as the new credit rating algorithm (which they announced, but didn't bother to explain how it works or how it is an improvement from the old one), or the profile pictures that now appear next to comments. I do think there is still some technology improvement that needs to be made (notably, adding 2fa, and adding a 'transaction history' so you can see in one display the deposits that were made to the account, withdrawals, investments, etc). But more and more, I think it is the lack of customer service and the problems with bad loans (including bad secured loans, since they aren't selling the collateral nor distributing the dividends it earns to investors in the bad loans) that are the site's biggest problem now.

Has anyone who invested in a secured loan that went into default and went through binding arbitration actually received any money back from sale of the collateral, or received any dividends earned by the collateral after the binding arbitration award was issued? (Presumably, that is the point after which the collateral, and its dividends, should be considered property of the investors.)(Although I think an argument could be made that if there were dividends earned by the collateral during the loan period that were not already forwarded to the borrower before the loan went into default, then after the arbitration award is issued, those accumulated dividends should be used for paying off the loan as well.)

[wolverine.ks]

I'm less worried about a hacker. I just prefer to stay logged in for fast checking. but that leaves the account open to all sorts of mischief. there should be 2fa required for everything on the site. taking out a loan, investing in a loan, selling notes, buying notes, depositing, withdrawing, etc...