Topic: BTCjam - Any Thoughts or Experiances - page 32. (Read 57508 times)

Yeah yeah... noob-sock-accounts talking on how BTCjam is great is the proof that you should avoid this service.

Hello, I started using BTCJam roughly a month ago. I have to say that it is an awesome idea. The website could use a lot of work. Same goes for the community. I started out by putting one of my bitcoins on the website. I spent probably two or three days researching the history of the website and all of the people who seemed to be active on the website. Then, I started investing in people. Generally I invest 0.01 and limit myself to that much per-person, even if they have multiple loan requests. On occasion I tried investing 0.1, but I am now much more careful about that because the one bad loan I invested in was a case where I invested 0.1. Sometimes when someone seems honest but for whatever reason seems high risk (they have a good plan, but bad credentials or vice versa) I will invest 0.001, just as a way of following the loan and seeing what happens.

After investing in everything that seemed worth investing in, I still had half a bitcoin left over, so I took that off the website and put it back into my own wallet. So far it looks like I only have one loan that has/will default. Unfortunately, that one is 0.1 or 1/5 of the money I have on the site. I will mention that I don't really like the loans which are linked to the usd/btc rate because I am interested in making bitcoins, not cash. If there is a chance you will get less bitcoins back from an investment, why not just hold onto your coins? Anyway, it looks like I will actually make up my loss because of a few high interest rate loans (which have already been paying, so I know they aren't scammers). Hopefully this website builds momentum. Hopefully the developers improve the website too, because right now there are a lot of problems.

One of the biggest problems with BTCJam is that the late fee is 0.5 bitcoins. This is ridiculous. People who wouldn't be scammers turn into scammers because they can't or don't want to pay the late fee. There are many other problems with the website's technical, and formal design, I don't want to waste my time detailing all the problems in this thread though.

Overall, BTCJam is one of many new platforms in an ever-evolving online marketplace. Bitcoin is not for the average investor, and BTCJam is even less so. You need to dedicate mindfulness and patience if you don't want to get burned. Bitcoin loaning to me is a much more interesting prospect than bitcoin mining or bitcoin securities when it comes to investing, I think more people should be thinking about it.

Thanks for reading my post
--Chase Vasic

I'm currently up with both my investing and borrowing activity on BTC Jam. I think it's a great site.. However, that's not to say the site doesn't have its problems.

I actually put together a 'companion' site that scrapes all of the publicly-available data on 'Jam, and presents it in a more easy to read fashion. You can view it at http://jam.sd.ai/ - Along with other members of the community, I've tried to identify a few metrics that show good borrowing activity, and as a result help to identify good investments. (BTC Jam itself doesn't display data very well, and it's hard to discover what you need to know.)

On the back of this, I've invested a total of over 7 BTC, of which 4.8 has been paid back with interest, and only 0.01 is overdue. That's pretty good going. I've also managed to leverage my reasonable reputation to borrow amounts of BTC I wouldn't normally be able to get my hands on, and have been paying back on time.

The thing is, BTC Jam is set up to encourage you to scatter small amounts around a large pool of borrowers, but I find it's better to spend time researching the individuals involved, and investing larger amounts with those.

There are some things that the admins could do that would benefit, however. As far as I can tell, they don't take much action before the loan becomes officially "in default", which I think is ~180 days after the last overdue payment. (They can correct me if I am wrong about this.) -- In my experience from running a business, 9 out of 10 customers with overdue payments will cough up if you phone them and ask them to. BTC Jam have verified numbers for all borrowers, so this is really something they should be doing.

As I understand it, they're currently 4 people but have just got some VC funding so I'm hoping this will grow, and they'll be putting someone in whose job is to do collections. I'm pretty sure that will help.

There are scammers on the site, no doubt. But if you actually spend a little time checking up on borrowers first, you can usually avoid them.

As a heavy lender and borrower on BTCJam let me say the following:

#1 - why would you think its improper to have more then 1 loan at same time?  I have 3 cars - and 3 car loans.   I qualified for all 3 and by having 3 it lowers my credit score.  BTCJam works under the same principle.   You can actively see how many loans a person has out and for how much at the time you decide to invest.   So this point is null and void.


#2 - there are 2 types of loans - btc loans and fiat linked loans.   The poster saying they got back less then they invested because of the change in value of btc - was investing in a fiat linked loan.  SImple - dont even invest in fiat linked loans and that is not a problem.    So this point is resolved.

#3 - scammers - yes there are scammers.   Suggestion is to invest in A and B rated borrowers with a history of repayment.  Anyone else invest very cautiously or very small amounts.   As for 1 bad loan knocking out 10 good ones?   I dont get your math.   My average loan investment amount as a lender is around .025 btc per loan at average interest rate of 5% per payment period.   If 1 guy doesnt pay me I get it back rather quickly.   Out of over 50 loans I have invested in - I have had 3 people default.   I am very much in the green.

#4 - Interest rates - they are per payment period.  So if you decide to pay daily - you will be paying the choosen interest daily.    So if you do a 1 btc loan, paid back daily at 1% - you will be paying 1% daily.   If you do 1 btc with weekly payback at 1% - you will be paying back 1% weekly.   This is not very clear - they really should make this much more obvious to borrowers and lenders.


Look  like every platform BTCJam has its issues - but what makes BTCJam strive is the community.  There is a very strong community and it has offshoots that include real life friends, investment clubs, mining groups, google plus hangouts....etc.  The members of this community stick together to inform each other about scammers, suspicous activity, improvements to the system etc.

So if your interested in using BTCJam I suggest you stop by the USER community on facebook - which is 100% USER run and ADMINed by USERS.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/btcinvestors/


Its a great platform, and yes you can earn significant coin if you are cautious and listen to the community members advice on what to watch out for.  Yes there are scammers every once in awhile - and the users and the company are striving to fix that but you will always have jerks in the world.

Thought I'd post my own BTCJam experiences here - hopefully a balanced view of what BTCJam has meant for me.

I registered back in January 2014 after getting sick of the banks in the UK giving close to nothing by way of interest on my savings. As with every diversified investment portfolio, I didn't dump all my savings into Bitcoin, but I do have what I consider a sizeable chunk of cash invested now (10 BTC at the present time).

In the early days I had relative success, but Bitcoin being so far detached from real currency, I paid little attention to the amount I was investing in one borrower, this was fine for most of January but one borrower did default on a 0.2 BTC loan (0.2 - nothing really?! Well yes, actually, it was £100 back then!!) In this instance, the user claimed their ID had been stolen by way of a Gmail compromise - their identity documents left in their "sent" folder from a previous credit application, and allegedly used to sign up to BTCJam and take out a loan. Whether or not this was true is largely irrelevant as BTCJam could only verify the data they were sent, and as that was (again allegedly) a full set of identity documents, for all intents and purposes they were dealing with the genuine article.

After this episode, I became a bit more cautious with my Bitcoins, scrutinising lenders motives more and lending less to single lenders - this paid off and I had a full month with no issues (pitfall number 1: I can't tell you how much I made as there is no transaction history...yet - we are promised this is coming soon).

Then came March (or "Black March" as I like to call it). In this month, I (and many others) fell victim to a number of defaulters, with varying levels of creativity in their stories;

• One borrower just decided he wouldn't bother repaying, and stuck around long enough to taunt his investors about the fact
• Four borrowers took the coins and ran with no word at all
• One borrower claimed they had lost their Bitcoin wallet to a hardware failure on a hosting platform - we eagerly await the outcome of that one
• One borrower had issues with paying back the loan, but is still in contact with the investors so I'm not writing this one off yet
• One borrower, who had worked hard on their reputation, and was highly respected in the community, came up with a story about how his email, Facebook and crucially BTCJam account had been compromised, spurious loans posted, and the proceeds taken without his knowledge. Again, this could have been true (I think he was a grade-A scammer) but this is where BTCJam COULD have done something - at the time, they didn't have two factor authentication. Had they had this, then the story would have been less plausible.
• One borrower got in over their heads and are currently working out how to sort that one out with their investors

So all in all, not a great month - I personally lost 3 BTC in the above scams - the most infuriating one is of the "reputable borrower" who took off with over 10 BTC of other peoples money - I believe this could have been avoided if 2FA had been in place at the time (2FA is available now so hopefully this will never happen again)

I was at the point where I was going to let all my loans mature then pull them out of BTCJam, but  few things have changed (including my risk appetite) which make me think it might be worth sticking around a bit longer. It was a total gamble putting so much of my cash into Bitcoin in the first place, I thought I might as well make it worth my while.

April is looking much better, there are a tighter group of investors and borrowers thanks to the Facebook group ReliableGar mentioned above, and we all look out for each other.

I expect to make back my losses over the course of this month, with careful investment at the forefront, and an army of people and some great tools at our disposal, it is a much safer place to invest than it was 3 months ago. We also have access to a fantastic tool written by one of the Facebook users (http://jam.sd.ai) which gives a wealth of information on borrowers and investors to help people make more informed decisions.

I'm well known by BTCJam for being vocal about what they could do to improve things, the good thing is they do listen, 2FA being a good example, just a shame it cost investors so much before they got there.

Credit where its due though, Alexis and Flavio are working hard to make BTCJam work, and the Facebook group are spurring them on regularly. If you fancy dropping by, just search for "Investors of BTCJam.com" on Facebook and we'll welcome you with open arms.

I've been on BTCJam for a few months now and both invested and borrowed heavily.  I've been scammed by 3 users which I put down to my own lack of caution.  Could more be done to help new users navigate the site and be given tips to spot scammers?  Sure!  But that's not a fault of BTCJam - it's just a lack of a feature they could have.  I currently administer a facebook group for users of BTCJam, we're almost 300 members strong - I won't post a link because I just signed up today and think that would be frowned upon. In that group we discuss tips and our experiences with various users.  Since connecting with some of the other strong members of the community I am confident investing.  Two amazing sites have spawned from the group for helping investors - one scrapes data from BTCJam and compiles awesome charts and figures on each user, and the other is a full-fledged community site (launching soon).

Let's not forget the philosophy that makes Bitcoin awesome - no central, top-down authority.  This is community - for BTCJam to become stricter on borrowers would also be to become more authoritarian.  Not that there should be no rules - but Bitcoin and BTCJam is so new that us early adopters are the ones who bare the effects of the teething pains and make this industry/community safe for all of our friends and family to join us here in the future.  I'm happy to pay the costs and put in the work to make it safe - I'm not going to pass the buck to others.

For all of it's teething pains - BTCjam is one of the most important developments in recent history.  Access to capital at any time without pleading to the banksters is too important - I'm thinking mostly of it's use to the third world where startups can acquire funding by sitting down with their phone for 20 minutes. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here!

I invest on btcjam, and I'm profitable so far.

But most of what people say here is true: lots of scammers, rates are confusing, support is hard to contact.

You'll be allright only if you invest in loans where:
- monthly rate does not exceed 8%
- decent business plan
- some loans already repayed
- not over-leveraged already (to much open loans)
- the guy opens his contacts, fb/linkedin/whatever

And of course - diversification is the key, small amounts spread between dozens of loans.

You have alternative: https://www.bitbond.net/
I didn't work with them yet.

Yep.  You can have 9 legit loans at 5% interest go perfect - and then you have the 1 that goes bad at 100% loss.
You can't win with those numbers.  BTCJam should be in the gambling section.

I see great success in BTCjam, has anyone loaned coin and got a good return there? I think the operator is just trying to keep it alive so he can keep scraping fee's. I also researched the company they are listed to be in brazil but have someone in the US that is part of the company. This opens them up to illegal lending practices, illegal use of likeness on the website when someone defualts and other types of legal problems. They are even seeking investments from parties in the US.

sending money to anonymous strangers who have no obligation to pay you back doesn't usually work out well

I put around 0.5 BTC into BTCJam.
After investing in 10 loans, my balance is now 0.04848149 BTC

I have 0.38 In defaulted loans.

I paid $34 for the 1/2 BTC I invested. 
I turned it into $29.71 at today's prices.

Not a real great environment to risk your BTC.

Are a "minority" yeah, right!

And when they scam, you do nothing but let them continue to do their nonsense with people, you continue to gave them the possibility to ask again for money to the people and you do not provide a single measure for helping the lenders to recover at least some satoshi from the bullshit that they have created.

See this as an example, there exists no help when something like this happens:

https://btcjam.com/listings/7354

https://btcjam.com/listings/8361

You should know that there are two different types of loans: bitcoin loans and linked loans.

Linked loans have the amount linked to the bitcoin exchange rate for a given BitstampUSD asset. The payment size in bitcoin will fluctuate over time following the exchange rate that asset. This type of loan makes sense if your income is denominated in USD or other fiat currencies, and you don't want to expose yourself to Bitcoin volatility: both as an investor and borrower.

Bitcoin loans are expressed in pure bitcoin. This type of loan makes sense if your income is denominated in BTC.

Yeah either post your user ID, or contact me at [email protected]

THAT is the scam pointed here.

It is NOT always % of BTC.
If the value of BTC increase by 50% in 180days, you'll get 55% of what you invested which mean you'll loose 45% of your BTC.

I am speaking from experience.

@ SlidingHorn:  Made me chuckle cheers and thanks for the heads up.

@ BTCjamSupport:  Is there any chance of you actually responding to my question posted in the OP or my 2 emails sent to you which have been ignored, asking how you calculate interest rates?  Currently its as clear as mud.  

EG: A loan request says "5BTC 180 days @ 10%" for example; that's 10% per what exactly?

Thanks for all the others that have contributed to this thread.  very helpful.

Best,
-Evil

The algorithm that determines credit score takes into account many different variables. Submitting identity information is a lot, but also payment behavior and outstanding balance are among the factors. In this specific case with user #9705: he has never had a payment, pays early, has almost all of his identity documentation confirmed, etc... If he did not have so many listings open, his credit score would more than likely be an A.

Dude with 6 open loans gets a C....

I, however, submitted ID, a pay stub, verified phone, social networks, attached gmail & ebay accounts, etc.....and I'm a D+

Makes perfect sense....   

We have been looking into this issue for awhile, and you are correct, the user #9705 has many open listings. Users are penalized for having multiple open listings in their credit score. (See how his is at C currently).
User #9705 has never made a late payment out of his 16 loans, 11 of which are paid in full. It is impossible to decipher that this is a ponzi scheme, which you have accused him of in your email. 

You will have to bear with us since we are new and learning how to deal with these type of issues. We appreciate you reporting this and if any suggestions about how to go about it, we would happily chat with you via email.



Could you please email [email protected]? I will review your ID submission and explain why it was denied.

Been trying to submit my ID for ages but no matter what "ID is to pixilated"  or whatever, How the hell am I supposed to get a good picture of my ID when it has holograms built into it? BTCjam is a waste from what I have seen. They lost a good customer with me, I have been investing on it since it opened and lost 7.7btc to date, on a user with great repayment history and stats. Now that I could use a loan of a couple of bitcoins they do not want to verify me...