Personally, I found out about BTC when I was in desperate need of money. My friend in AUS had me set up a CoinBase account and after everything was verified he sent me coins, which I deposited into my bank account. My bills were paid a week late, but they were paid.
A lot of people find out about Bitcoins in the event of a financial emergency, but they find it difficult to get loans even then.
Under what circumstances would you give a new user the benefit of the doubt and help out someone? How can you tell if it's a genuine emergency or a scammer doing what they do best? How would you handle a situation like this and what would make you feel more comfortable with lending to that person?
I don't need a loan, this is just a question. I don't dabble on BTCTalk too much (or at all) because of what I feel are security issues... but idk.. I might start getting into it and handing out some loans. I'm just not an experienced lender, so I'd like to know how some of the best decisions are made in situations like this (mainly because I can relate to, seriously, needing money very quickly).
Agreed, you should have valid collateral. Not only will you get negative trust for not having collateral, but it will be very unlikely for you to get a loan.