A couple of small reputation loans on BitLendingClub

[BitLendingClub]

Hi, I'd like to promote a couple of loans from our redesigned platform. Please take a look at the loan listings here:
https://bitlendingclub.com/loan

Specifically, we had a couple of users which have requests for small reputation loans:

Reputation loan of 0.05 BTC (100% funded)
Amount: 0.05000000 BTC
Term: 7 days
Payment Frequency: every 7 days
Country of Borrower: USA
Interest Rate: determined by the sum of lowest lender offers

AND

1st Rep Loan- help me build reputation (70.5% funded)
Amount: 0.04254414 BTC
Term: 14 days
Payment Frequency: every 7 days
Country of Borrower: USA
Interest Rate: determined by the sum of lowest lender offers

The borrowers have both passed our new verification process by uploading: ID, proof of address, phone number verification (SMS code), proof of income and verifying their e-mail. Please feel free to ask any questions by addressing them to me or using the comment section in the loan page.

[coinnewbit]

Can this be used later to scam others of their coin

[BitLendingClub]

Can this be used later to scam others of their coin

I hope not, we do everything possible to eliminate scammers.

[eternalgloom]

Reputation loans mean nothing though, someone paying back a 0.05 btc loan says nothing about his ability to pay back a 1 BTC loan.
I do like that you request proof of income, but I would also guess this could easily be faked?

[PerrythePlatypus]

The reputation loan doesn't mean anything. Most people try to build reputation before going big and scam someone.

[BitLendingClub]

Reputation loans mean nothing though, someone paying back a 0.05 btc loan says nothing about his ability to pay back a 1 BTC loan.
I do like that you request proof of income, but I would also guess this could easily be faked?

We take a lot of due diligence to make sure that the person is not submitting fake documents. The borrower would have to fake their ID, their proof of address, their phone number, AND their income just so they can post a loan request. By the time we cross-verify all the documents with each-other, the likelihood that any of them are fake is quite low. We also have a document disclosure policy, so if a person does owe 1 BTC and defaults, then the lenders would get the verification documents which were used by the person. Since we list the country of the borrower, this also allows the lender to determine if they would be able to legally prosecute the borrower in case of a default. In the next release, we will also show the city and state... which will make the decision even easier to make.

[PerrythePlatypus]

Reputation loans mean nothing though, someone paying back a 0.05 btc loan says nothing about his ability to pay back a 1 BTC loan.
I do like that you request proof of income, but I would also guess this could easily be faked?

We take a lot of due diligence to make sure that the person is not submitting fake documents. The borrower would have to fake their ID, their proof of address, their phone number, AND their income just so they can post a loan request. By the time we cross-verify all the documents with each-other, the likelihood that any of them are fake is quite low. We also have a document disclosure policy, so if a person does owe 1 BTC and defaults, then the lenders would get the verification documents which were used by the person. Since we list the country of the borrower, this also allows the lender to determine if they would be able to legally prosecute the borrower in case of a default. In the next release, we will also show the city and state... which will make the decision even easier to make.

Isn't it dangerous to release the info of the person?

[BitLendingClub]

Reputation loans mean nothing though, someone paying back a 0.05 btc loan says nothing about his ability to pay back a 1 BTC loan.
I do like that you request proof of income, but I would also guess this could easily be faked?

We take a lot of due diligence to make sure that the person is not submitting fake documents. The borrower would have to fake their ID, their proof of address, their phone number, AND their income just so they can post a loan request. By the time we cross-verify all the documents with each-other, the likelihood that any of them are fake is quite low. We also have a document disclosure policy, so if a person does owe 1 BTC and defaults, then the lenders would get the verification documents which were used by the person. Since we list the country of the borrower, this also allows the lender to determine if they would be able to legally prosecute the borrower in case of a default. In the next release, we will also show the city and state... which will make the decision even easier to make.

Isn't it dangerous to release the info of the person?

It's a policy they agree to prior to posting the loan request. It's not dangerous because we only release the document to the lenders with which the borrower has a legally binding contract. This means that the two parties are already engaged in a contract, the borrower would normally have to present these documents prior to signing the contract, but we act as a document "escrow" service and we only release them in case of a default.

[eternalgloom]

How is this different from btcjam? Not being sarcastic, genuinely don't know.

[BitLendingClub]

How is this different from btcjam? Not being sarcastic, genuinely don't know.

It's not that much different from BTCJam, but we do have several distinguishing factors:

1. The lenders determine the interest rate instead of the borrower, and if the borrower likes it then they either accept or reject the offers. It's basically the dutch auction style lending, the sum of the lowest interest rate offers for a borrower get taken into account.
2. We only charge our fee of 1% when the loan gets paid back AND there are no withdrawal fees.
3. We're heavily focused on allow all sorts of collateral (not available yet, but it's coming soon):
    a. Altcoins- litecoin, namecoin, primecoin, etc.
    b. Digital securities- cex.io, cryptostocks.com, etc.
    c. Financial securities- stocks, bonds, options, futures, etc. anything that can be transferred via one of the standard brokerages.
    d. Gift cards- Gyft (gyft.com), Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc.
    e. Digital property- domain names, twitter accounts, etc.
4. We are working on a brand new rating system and here is the image:

[monbux]

How is this different from btcjam? Not being sarcastic, genuinely don't know.

It's not that much different from BTCJam, but we do have several distinguishing factors:

1. The lenders determine the interest rate instead of the borrower, and if the borrower likes it then they either accept or reject the offers. It's basically the dutch auction style lending, the sum of the lowest interest rate offers for a borrower get taken into account.
2. We only charge our fee of 1% when the loan gets paid back AND there are no withdrawal fees.
3. We're heavily focused on allow all sorts of collateral (not available yet, but it's coming soon):
    a. Altcoins- litecoin, namecoin, primecoin, etc.
    b. Digital securities- cex.io, cryptostocks.com, etc.
    c. Financial securities- stocks, bonds, options, futures, etc. anything that can be transferred via one of the standard brokerages.
    d. Gift cards- Gyft (gyft.com), Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc.
    e. Digital property- domain names, twitter accounts, etc.
4. We are working on a brand new rating system and here is the image:

How is B grade and BB grade harder to achieve than A grade?

[Vod]

Essentially, this site enables scammers to go from a BB rating to a D rating and successfully scam.

This forum has a no collateral no loan policy.  You shouldn't be advertising your site on this forum.   

[KWH]

Reputation loans are heavily frowned upon here as they almost always lead to a scam later on.

[BitLendingClub]

How is B grade and BB grade harder to achieve than A grade?

AAA to BBB grade requires collateral, whereas from BB on there is no collateral. My assumption was that when there is collateral, the verification level shouldn't matter as much.

[BitLendingClub]

Essentially, this site enables scammers to go from a BB rating to a D rating and successfully scam.

I've posted a thread for the rating system and I'm taking suggestions on how to improve it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=585699.msg6408754#msg6408754

I'm a little worried that you claim that my website "enables" scammers to scam, when in fact we're battling scammers all the time. We make absolutely no money when a scammer defaults, since all of our fees are taken with the payments. So scamming cuts into our revenue stream directly, my business wouldn't go far if I'm enabling scammers in any way. Furthermore, if we don't battle scammers, then our website will fail completely (not that it's doing amazing right now, but you know what I mean). So it's very disheartening to be accused of enabling scammers!

In addition, we're simply enabling people to do everything they can do here, but in a much more organized environment.

This forum has a no collateral no loan policy.  You shouldn't be advertising your site on this forum.   

Again, I appreciate the feedback, but my understanding is that, and I quote from the sticky:

Due to scams a "rule" has been created which, while not currently "enforced", is basically a minimum requirement to get a loan. Note that this isn't an official forum rule, it's just a rule that most lenders will follow.

We're working on enabling all kinds of collateral on our website, so by the time this rule starts getting enforced, I'm hoping that we'll have it all up and running. Again, I'm not trying to argue here, I appreciate all feedback and I'm hoping that my website can be helpful for both borrowers and lenders alike.