With the debt crises in the eurozone, bitcoiners have been advocating the use of bitcoin in place of fiat. I don't think that will solve the problem on ground, people will always borrow money whether cash or bitcoins. What do you think?
It's hard to borrow bitcoins because if you borrow say, a mortgage of 200,000 and bitcoins triple, sure you may have paid 10,000 bit you now owe 590,000 and the house is still not worth anything close to that.
For short-term loans it's fine (depending on the time period) because it's usually fairly predictable in the sense that a normal swing is about 10%. It's when places get hacked or there's a lot of price speculation assuming it's going to go in because of X, Y, and Z, you have issues with repayment.
Now if you loan bitcoins, but based on a USD / Euro amount, you yourself ar at risk because if the prices go up you might as well have just held onto your bitcoins!
depends on the terms.. if loan based on fiat value.. then taking out a 10k btc loan one year you may only have to repay 5k btc the next year, for every negative their is an equal and opposite positive..
as for other people thinking that loans can only happen if fractional reserves occur, thats wrong. credit unions dont fractional reserve their loans, they use account holders funds to hand out loans.
however there would need to be a way to control debtors who do not repay.. because due to fractional reserves. banks can hand out hundreds of thousands of "credit" because the real cost is only pennies on the dollar. so they have spare profitability to chase debtors, even if they cant get it all back. or even sell the debt out to other agencies. banks will never lose out.
credit unions only hand out smaller amounts and do it locally to reduce the risk/cost of debtor collections.
without a fractional reserve, i do not see "mortgage" size loans being justified. but small daily/weekly expense loans with locals (reduce transport/admin costs) could possibly work, with the right administration and rules inplace to make it efficient and workable