I think a lending website that works on the concept of trusting nobody except reputable escrows. The amount of borrowers of your website who are con artists is staggering. In addition, I think a social lending website should be able to develop a mechanism that enables the sale of ownership of debts. Any information would be provided and a good hacker/detective can probably recover a purchased debt. There is far too much leverage for borrowers on BTCJam.
Appreciate the feedback. We are working hard on getting great borrowers & I think over our growth we have made advancements here. Fraud rates are down which is good thing. As blockchain tools/services keep growing I think one day something you mentioned might be possible.
It would be more fair to us investors if a portion of the fees that BTCjam collects went to an insurance fund that would refund the principal on our investments in the event of borrower default. It would also likely improve motivation for borrower screening and debt collection if BTCjam assumes some risk by having skin in the game.
Having a marketplace as a business is having complete skin in the game.. If the marketplace isn't good, rates arent good, borrowers arent good 0 we lose - it is a very simple theory. It's out business, Im not sure we could have more skin in the game than that. Screening is something that we are working very hard on to delivery better practices and lower defaults across the board.
I will grant you that a good business reputation has value, but judging from the amount of negative feedback on this forum from burned lenders, I would say that BTCjam has at minimum a skin rash problem
. Equating the dings and dents to your business reputation to what lenders are losing in cash to defaults is begging the question of how to prevent defaults in the first place. Basically all you are saying here is that BTCjam is working really really really hard to lower the amount of defaults, and by implication that we lenders should trust you because you are working really really really hard on this (would also be interested in seeing some statistics on the number of BTCjam defaults and how much debt has been lost and recovered b.t.w.). As a lender I would personally feel more secure about investing if I knew that the company doing the screening is working transparently and has more than just its already damaged reputation at stake.
We are working towards lowering defaults, that is part of the business in many ways. Being transparent about screening is tricky because we are then providing a lot of details about how we screen etc. Not sure that is the best idea at this time, but your comments are noted. We are trialling out some different collection methods/tools but aren't at a point to comment about that any more at this time. Thanks for sharing this.
Out of the 12 Brazilian loans I have made since September...
- 5 are paying on time
- 5 have not made the first payment
- 2 remain to be seen (first payment not due yet)
Looks like we are headed for minimum 50% default rate on Brazilian loans
Adding insult to injury is the fact that investors in BTCjam fiat backed loans are now getting massacred by a 100% spike in Bitcoin rates since September (that's a 90% loss of principal for a 10% loan - BTCjam is able to rate the borrowers and determine "fair" loan interest for them risk free, since BTCjam collects their fees up front when investors fund the loan).
Is BTCjam some sort of stealth philanthropy project for Brazilian borrowers or WTF?!?
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