Bitcoin Credit Union

[sentry]

Bitcoin Credit Union
http://bccu.no-ip.org

Status: Registrations are open, approval required. Currently alpha state.
Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/BitcoinCU


Donations are welcome and appreciated!

[matt.collier]

Hi Sentry,

You indicate that members are paid for maintaining a balance.  Can you explain how this works?

[sentry]

Hi Sentry,

You indicate that members are paid for maintaining a balance.  Can you explain how this works?

Hey matt,

keeping a balance in your savings allows dividends to be paid to your account. dividends come from bank profits on things such as transaction fees, and overdraft fees (overdrafting undecided). also you will be given the option to invest in member loans where the interest is paid to the investors.

thankyou for the question, it makes me rethink how things should work and whether or not they will at all. also, if you have any ideas or suggestions, anything at all that you thing would be a better way of doing things PLEASE feel free to voice your opinions here.

[Ryan]

This is a pioneering idea! I love seeing things like this. The problem is you haven't established what exactly your aim is and you haven't mentioned any benefits to users.

Earning an interest rate would be great, but you haven't worked out how you'll earn income. If it's by charging users to withdrawal/send money, then you need to tell us exactly how much.

Also, not using https on your site is a huge red flag and indicates you haven't given due diligence to security. Someone mentioned you could get a free ssl certificate here at a site called http://www.startcom.org. I don't know if there are eligibility requirements or not. You could also self-sign.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2626.0

[sentry]

This is a pioneering idea! I love seeing things like this. The problem is you haven't established what exactly your aim is and you haven't mentioned any benefits to users.

Earning an interest rate would be great, but you haven't worked out how you'll earn income. If it's by charging users to withdrawal/send money, then you need to tell us exactly how much.

Also, not using https on your site is a huge red flag and indicates you haven't given due diligence to security. Someone mentioned you could get a free ssl certificate here at a site called http://www.startcom.org. I don't know if there are eligibility requirements or not. You could also self-sign.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2626.0

Thanks ryan!

I appreciate your interest, my aim is simply to create a bank system that is not just a simple ewallet, those are great and I use them myself but I really wanted something that would benefit the people who use it, so with that regard I'm trying to make something I would want to use myself.
 
Right now depositing and withdrawing are free but to transfer funds between accounts will have a fee. The actual fee itself is determined by the users. I will initially set it at a .1% rate and from there the members can cast votes to increase or decrease this fee. I should mention that votes themselves will have their own fee, also determined by the members. This is meant to limit the number of votes cast by any one person. My goal is not to be any kind of president of the credit union, the very nature of credit unions are that they are ran by its members (volunteers). Your votes will be handled by the amount of weight you hold to the credit union which is based on your shares compared to the total number of shares the CU holds.

Just so you know I do not intend to keep this on my local machine, right now I just wanted to let you guys look at it and if you wanted to play around with it a bit you could. Since its not on the testnet I don't want to open registrations. Once I feel good about the functionality of the website and it gets moved to a new server I will look into ssl and getting that setup.

Again thanks for your interest and suggestion, I very much appreciate it!

[jtimon]

Hi, you can allow members to chose who they trust by using ripplepay. Only someone you trust could default on your loan, you would only owe to people who trust you.
It's free software, so you can modify it at your will. RainDroplet (a fork) uses it for credits.

http://ripple-project.org/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ripple/

https://raindroplet.info/

http://gitorious.org/raindroplet

I hope this is useful for you.

Good luck.

[speeder]

Interesting

I wish to participate in that, if you iron out the already pointed issues.

[nereer]

this is a great idea, in that it sets up a banking alternative to ewallet that users can trust, by participating in it's running.

[FatherMcGruder]

Sentry, will you open source the code?

[TehZomB]

This is a great idea! It was only a little bit of time before someone made a credit union for Bitcoin...

Good luck to you!

Oh, and I second the SSL requrement - Startcom's interface is a headache sometimes, but it's well worth it - a free SSL cert that works in all modern browsers (except maybe Opera)? Yes please.

[opticbit]

Good idea

Had this thought, could work out nice for the credit union and the bitcoin community

Make a bitcoin gift card to be sold in Brick n Mortar stores.  Similar to the Visa prepaid cards or green dot, that are sold for $5 plus the value of the card.

This could help it get some exposure, People would see it and at least wonder what is is, then BTC will start to get some recognition.

Getting very computer literate people to use BTC is hard enough, especially now that PayPal has shut down CoinPal.  Getting the common folk to use it is an even greater challenge, many of them still don't know what PP is.

Not sure how much the stores get out of the $5, but the rest would goto the Credit Union for Servers, Coders (high volume trading?), and into the interest rates.

Hope to see a pool set up with a large prize to be won for getting this setup.

I think its only the Credit card type gift cards that require an ID (when you open the thing up you get a fed law requires... of course theres ways around it, but usually the card is less useable), going against some of the intents of bitcoin.  I think the iTunes and Facebook "credits", gift cards don't require ID and have a set price.  Might need to use carrots.

Probably need to get some mom n pop type stores, and hopefully someday into larger chains/franchises. Anyone know a mom n pop shop in a geographic area with a high concentrations of BTC users?  I would think some of the already established users would go buy some just to support the store for starting to take them.

Would be nice to have the store be able to load any amount the customer wants and have the cost based on MTGox.  Probably need to just sell a set value like $20 USD worth of BTC (+$5 fee for total of $25) and then when you sign in you get the current exchange rate, around 5 BTC at todays rate.

Would be nice to get the gift card fee down to $2 (maybe, yes thats high for $20, but good if your putting $500 in, not sure where all the fees go on those cards) to keep with the low transaction fee standards of BTC.

I could see this causing a rapid increase in value of BTC if someplace like 7/11 started carrying the gift card, especially if they would start accepting, to the point where the decimal would need to be moved.

Anyone know someone in a position to make this happen.

[opticbit]

add an OperationFabulous banner to help the intrest rates

[opticbit]

Good idea

Had this thought, could work out nice for the credit union and the bitcoin community

Make a bitcoin gift card to be sold in Brick n Mortar stores.  Similar to the Visa prepaid cards or green dot, that are sold for $5 plus the value of the card.....

just found bitbills  this could work.

[sentry]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will see what I can do. In the meantime I have opened registrations, please register so we can look for any bugs that have been hiding from me. Once you register you will have to wait for your account to be activated, even though it says verification email sent, it wont send anything. I will manually activate accounts on a first come first serve basis until I have enough for testing.

Please don't deposit too much.

The next thing I will be working on is dividends. Stand by...

[FooDSt4mP]

I registered... waiting for approval.  Might I suggest sending an email when the user is approved?

[deadlizard]

you should open this on testnet, thats what it's there for ..... testing

[Nesetalis]

i like this idea.. ive always had a place in my heart for credit unions... they helped me through school   
i do hope you can find a way to make this a viable CU.

[nereer]

I have signed up but have not yet received the confirmation email (not in junk).

Also, I don't know if you have seen this but there is a guy out there who knows CU intimately and has written about bitcoin:

http://cuhistory.blogspot.com/2011/04/bitcoin-natural-experiment-for-credit.html

[evoorhees]

I think a number of these credit unions will be created over the next year, primarily enabling venture capital to go to new bitcoin startups. If trust can be earned by members then these resource pools will be wildly successful.

And that's why I bought BitcoinCreditUnion.com... happy to sell it for the right amount of Btc =)

[Nesetalis]

psh :p right, buy up a domain to sell it... very helpful.