[ANN] BTCJam - Peer to Peer Bitcoin Lending

[supermono]

BTCJam doesn't have a support fact. no reaction to any mails I sent them (waiting since 2 months now).

Worst service and it's a scammers heaven. I wouldn't recommend it.

I have to agree. I'm still waiting on a response to the questions I asked here in the forum on August 13, and haven't gotten any response to email either.

It's a shame. I really liked the concept of BTCJam. I stuck with it for a year now with a loss month after month hoping that it would get its problems resolved. It's a pity that they really never solved the problem of the defaulting borrowers, and that the customer service has gone from slow (during the early months) to nonexistent (since August). At this point, I've stopped making new 'investments' in BTCJam loans, and am withdrawing BTC as it comes in. BTCJam will need to improve its customer service before I consider investing again.

[1715353000]

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[Rassah]

Why not get some coders together and put together a competing service? The demand is obviously there, as are people willing to make that happen...

[wolverine.ks]

is tulkas willing to sell the code? sell the site?

[Rassah]

is tulkas willing to sell the code? sell the site?

I doubt it  If only because it wuld take him or eer to get back to you even if you asked 

[Shermo]

I sent a message to everyone on their contacts page, hopefully I'll get a response from someone, although perhaps not going by other peoples comments on here.

[ChaosFox]

And here I was thinking I could give a try to this after the CoinLenders debacle.   The idea of distributing risk when lending to people was interesting, I hope someone comes up with a better implementation of it.

[Rassah]

Has anyone gotten any response to anything sent to BTCJam in the last month? Is this project still going, or is basically all running automatically, but is otherwise abandoned?

[Shermo]

Has anyone gotten any response to anything sent to BTCJam in the last month? Is this project still going, or is basically all running automatically, but is otherwise abandoned?

I got a response from support@btcjam.com the other day within 24hrs of emailing them. I was asking what, if anything, will done about the massive default of Ziggap (Ryan Schreiber and Stormy Schreiber). They said they are going to talk with their legal department about if they can do anything about releasing information to the lenders, the defaulted amount is about 1000BTC / $350,000 which is a rather hefty sum of money.

[Rassah]

Thanks! Good to know Celso is still on top of things.

[AlexC]

Hi
I just paid back my loan https://btcjam.com/listings/6453.

But the 12xTAT.ASICMINER was not returned to my btct account?

The 10xBASIC-MINING was returned as expected.

Should i do anything to solve this problem ?

/AlexC

Hi,
I have also sent several e-mails to support@btcjam.com regarding this, but I have never gotten any answer on this. Are you actual getting my e-mails?

Thanks
  AlexC

[mobile]

Two questions:

1) What is this all about? If I (and everyone) agrees. They will be repaid their loaned BTC but with a 55% haircut? If so....man cmon, seriously lame. Cant even withdraw that amount due to the 0.0025BTC transaction reserve.


2) What happen to the BTC that was on my account. Granted it was only a small ammount (0.007 approx) but back when i was using btcjam, 0.007BTC was worth .21 cents. Now its worth 3.70. Almost a year later, have yet to receive a response e-mail of a couple of inquiries including this one.

//edit: added image

[Reckman]

@ BTCJAM

Love the website/service, but have a couple features I would like to see added

• MTGoxUSD Loans using 5+ Day Moving Average - alot of lenders are getting burned by rapid BTC/USD changes, the borrower can choose both when to activate the loan and when to pay it back giving them flexibility to cash in on rapidly changing exchange rates. Commonly borrowers pay back loans only after a couple days, leaving the lender with no currency risk protection and a loss of bitcoins. Another way to deal with this would be to not allow early payments, but that isn't ideal.
• Remove Loan Payment Dates - This just seems antiquated from the backing system. It ends up causing some 30 day loans to be 59 days. There is no reason loans can't be simply due 7/30/60/180 days after origination instead of on the first of the month ect.
• 2-Factor Authentication
• Locked Withdrawal Addresses
• Email Response Confirmations

[dnyce]

At this point, this service has me feeling a bit scammed....

I say a bit because they actually do provide you with the BTC you put in/invested, and they don't just take it and disappear. But, short of that, they seem to just take your money and stay silent about it.

Main Issues:

1) MtGoxUSD Based Loans: If I had known that these loans would be backed against USD and I would be getting screwed on the BTC price increases, I would have NEVER invested in the loan. This was not made clear when investing in the listing. The only way I found out was checking the dashboard to see how much BTC I was still owed on some current loans, and seeing that price rapidly drop with the latest BTC increases. They have a brief talking point about this type of loan, but you'd think they would highlight it more prominently.

2) Support Emails: I sent an email to their support box over 2 weeks ago now AND have yet to receive a response. So much for 24 hr turnaround times. This one alone is enough to make me wary of ANY company, let alone a BTC lending company.

3) Defaulted Loans: It looks like one of the borrowers on their site will be defaulting on a loan that I invested in. I suppose this risk comes with the territory, but you'd hope that the company would put their money where their mouth is and would do something in the way of recourse for defaulted loans.

All in all, I think I'll be staying away from this type of business until someone can button it up and make it a bit more lender friendly.

[whathe12]

Hey, I just need a quick favor. I need a Screenshot of the page where you are making the loan, with the value of it, the date its set to expire, where you turn on Mt.GoxUSD etc. If someone could get me a SS of this page that would be very much helpful.

[Rassah]

Ironically, any offer of help sent to them takes about 2 weeks to 2 months to hear back from, too. With the follow-up questions taking another 2 months to acknowledge, it's rather difficult to be hired by them, too 

[AlexC]

Hi
I just paid back my loan https://btcjam.com/listings/6453.

But the 12xTAT.ASICMINER was not returned to my btct account?

The 10xBASIC-MINING was returned as expected.

Should i do anything to solve this problem ?

/AlexC

Hi,
I have also sent several e-mails to support@btcjam.com regarding this, but I have never gotten any answer on this. Are you actual getting my e-mails?

Thanks
  AlexC

I have still not got any feedback from BTCJam on this issue.

/AlexC

[JuenoMT]

And here I was thinking I could give a try to this after the CoinLenders debacle.  The idea of distributing risk when lending to people was interesting, I hope someone comes up with a better implementation of it.

I have come up with a solution to the lending problem, I know it needs work put the core concept would work just fine. Here is a quote to my thread on the subject.

My Proposal:


Looking for partners to develop a new crypto-coin system, this system is intended to work with Bitcoin and not to be an alternative to Bitcoin.  The projects name is Lend-n-Vest and involves the creation of new crypto-coins dubbed LoanCoin, LendCoin and HedgeCoin.  The Lend-n-Vest system of crypto-coins will be designed to solve two of the oldest financial problems in existence, 'how to loan money without the risk of a loss in your investment' AND 'how to borrow money without the risk of defaulting on the loan.' The concept is fairly simple, but the implementation will be complex. In essence the concept goes like this:



     1. An investor has X amount of funds that they wish to make a profit on by loaning the funds to a trustworthy entity.
     2. A trustworthy entity needs funding for a startup project, business, home purchase, to fund their education, etc...

The scenario;

After doing much research the investor has found several possible candidates that seem like good investments but is a little disappointed about the cost of fee's involved in traditional investment packages and the possibility of potentially loosing 100% of the investment in a direct loan if the debtor is unsuccessful or fraudulent. The investor finds the proposal of the pre-mentioned entity very attractive because the person/project/business has great potential and is inline with the investors personal interests. Additionally the investor is atracked to the investment because it has a wonderful altruistic social component.

The problem for the investor is that despite the fact that the investor would love to give the person/project/business a chance to succeed the investor cannot be sure of the trustworthiness of the entity nor the financial viability of the person/project/business.  Traditionally the investor would most likely avoid investing in the candidates because of the risks and except the lower returns of traditional investments for the sake of financial security.

This is a shame because many wonderful ideas, innovations and a great deal of progress has never been realized due to the human tendency to avoid risk. This is where the Lend-n-Vest system can make a revolutionary change in society.

This is the option the investor would have with the Lend-n-Vest system:

Finding a worthy person/project/business the investor purchases X number of LoanCoins. Each LoanCoin is packaged with one LendCoin and one HedgeCoin. LoanCoins have a maturity date and mature at a value that is equal to the original purchase plus interest. The value of a LoanCoin on its maturity date is guaranteed. LendCoins are worth a small fraction of its associated LoanCoin. HedgeCoins have an initial value of 'zero' on the day of it's creation. This initial value of a LendCoin changes inversely against the value of some base crypto-coin (likely Bitcoin) The value of a LoanCoin is Locked buy its cousin the HedgeCoin and its maturity date is not set until its associated LendCoin is liquidated by converting it into another crypto-coin (cashing it).  A LendCoin is destroyed when it is converted.  HedgeCoins are processed immediately and function like options.  HedgeCoins can function independently of LoanCoins and therefore can always be used to persevere the value an investment giving the HedgeCoin extra value. HedgeCoins will have a guaranteed value based on its inverse function and can be traded for a [HedgeCoin(+)premium] market value. Furthermore LoanCoins, for the sake of liquidity, can be traded before their maturity date, this gives the investor the option to make a short term or longterm investment or adjust their investment plan when needed.  After maturity a LoanCoin can be converted for its value in the original crypto-coin it was based on.  Like its counterpart the LendCoin, the mature LoanCoin is destroyed when converted.

The Lend-n-Vest system is also intended to allow miners to profitably use their existing hardware.  With the advent of ASICs many miners are finding that their expensive hardware is losing its usefulness for mining.  The new hardware is pushing many miners out of the game and is threatening to create the all to familiar 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer' situation.  I think that this is something that most in the Bitcoin community wish to avoid.  By arranging the mining procedure in such a way that restricts the three Lend-n-Vest coins so that miners with the most powerful hardware have to rely on those miners with older slower hardware will equalize the situation.  There are many ways to do this and since value is a product of work done for coin generation it can be fair and equitable.

One such solution would be that ASIC miners generate the LoanCoins, FPGA miners generate LendCoins and ASIC/FPGA miners pay GPU miners to generate the HedgeCoin (the third and essential part of the Lend-n-Vest system.)  By changing difficulty levels, including an automatic donation to lower level miners and a dynamic reward distribution based on hashing power distribution, miners with newer hardware will be encouraged to fund hardware upgrades for those with older hardware.  This process can continue even if ASIC technology is replaced by something more advanced. For example; if the conformation speed of blocks found is dependent on support miners with GPUs then ASIC miners will want to increase their donation percentage so that GPU miners can upgrade to FPGAs.

By wisely adjusting difficulty levels over time, the general strength and hardware advancement will increase for all and leaving no one out if they wish to join in.  Lets say that at some point in the future there is no one left on the generation network using GPUs. Then, someone somewhere gets onto the network and begins to mine with a GPU. This causes everyone's numbers drop enough that they want to fix the problem, donations go up, then the new miner upgrades (because the miner will have a much greater profit if they upgrade) and everything returns to normal.

Now, the LoanCoin and LendCoin work together in this manner, an investor purchases/mines LoanCoins, with the purchase of the LoanCoins are included an equal number of LendCoins and HedgeCoins. The investor finds a worthy cause and gives the LendCoins to the individuals.  Yes that's right, gives away the LendCoins free of charge.  You see, the profit is built into the Lend-n-Vest system.  The investor is guaranteed to make their profit when their LoanCoins meet maturely!  The LendCoins are worth much less than their associated LoanCoin, in fact they are to be worth around 10-20% of the Lend-n-Vest coin package. Of the 10-20% only 5% or so percent  of the original LoanCoin value will be available to the receiver but that 5% or so percent is generated value and does not deduct from the Lend-n-Vest systemcoin purchase amount! In addition most of the fees involved are paid by generated value.  
  
At this point in development it is assumed that very little or none of the original investment is lost or spent. This is the security of the investment! Most of the extra value is accomplished through a clever arrangement of merged mining. The purpose of the HedgeCoin is to preserve the investors capital against the fluctuation of crypto-currency markets as well as to provide general stability in the markets and provide an additional profit opportunity.

What this all boils down to is that the investment funds are being lent to the Lend-n-Vest system and the investor is paid an interest for their investment.  The added bonus is that the investor is able to finance and provide support for causes that the investor cares about. It will be Philanthropy realized!

I really want to see this happen so lets get it done!

 Thanks for your consideration!

[AlexC]

Hi
I just paid back my loan https://btcjam.com/listings/6453.

But the 12xTAT.ASICMINER was not returned to my btct account?

The 10xBASIC-MINING was returned as expected.

Should i do anything to solve this problem ?

/AlexC

Hi,
I have also sent several e-mails to support@btcjam.com regarding this, but I have never gotten any answer on this. Are you actual getting my e-mails?

Thanks
  AlexC

I have still not got any feedback from BTCJam on this issue.

/AlexC

BTCJam support has now answered me in an e-mail. They are working with/waiting for btctc to resolve the problem.

/AlexC

[BurtW]

When I sell a debt at a discount let's say it is 1 BTC and the buyer pays 1 BTC it appears I get less than 1 BTC.  So, BTCJam must take a cut.  What is their cut when brokering the sale of a debt?

[dairymaid]

Is this the catch all BTCJam thread here or are there others I should be aware
of? I have only confirmed my forum name but if there was another thread
to introduce yourself to other users I'd like to do that as well