Similar points have been raised on another USD loan secured by Bitcoin recently.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=874378.0The difference between that loan and this one is that he is offering to maintain the collateral bitcoin at 120% of the value of the principal.
I made, as did others, some points about the vulnerability to change in the $
BTC rate, but as the OP in the other thread finally got around to was that there doesn't have to be.
OP has real life short term need for $X but doesn't want to sell his x
BTC because he's neutral/bullish on the price. Fair enough.
The lender has $X doing nothing in the bank, sees a chance of making some interest and says ok.
x
BTC go to escrow, $X go to borrower.
Loan period ends, $X plus interest go back to lender, x
BTC back to borrower.
End of story.
At 120% maintained value of collateral, he wanted to pay 1% a month and was offered 3% on $1000.
As I said on the other thread, it also can be a way for the borrower to speculate on the value of Bitcoin increasing over the period of the loan. He either buys Bitcoin with the dollars or leaves it as Bitcoin if that is the method of transfer.
Even if that is his motivation, it doesn't put the lender at risk if he has loaned spare dollars and not affected his bitcoin holding, and if the OP tops up the security in bitcoin automatically.
But as it's a speculative buy, there should also be a stop loss. If the deal's done at 360, then there's an automatic sell order organised by the escrow at 300 + slippage of at least 10% i.e. 330 and you bail out immediately the borrower stops maintaining his margin. Just like Wall St.
That's not necessarily bad for the OP, if it goes down when he thinks it should go up, then he's probably best out of it with his shirt. And the lender still gets their dollars back.
I don't use Bitfinex, how much would they charge you for 75% extra leverage, 7 against 4 bitcoin, to go long on Bitcoin for a month?