To my understanding people deposit money into banks and the banks use that money to give out loans.
That how it should be, but unfortunately the reality of
Fractional-reserve banking is this:
But with Bitcoin everyone is essentially their own bank, meaning there wouldn’t be anyone to give out traditional loans.
That wouldn't be any different if everybody would only use cash, and hold on to their own cash. The moment you give something to a bank, the bank can lend it out. Bitcoin users have proven to give large amounts of their coins to exchanges, and some exchanges have been lending these coins out for trading already.
This credit theory of money, while possible with a monetary system such as fiat where more can be created at will by centralized entities, isn't possible with a system like bitcoin.
I think you're wrong here. I'd really hate to see fractional reserve banking introduced in Bitcoin, but I'm pretty sure it's going to happen once banks start losing business: suppose a bank holds 10,000
BTC, and gives out 10,000 loans of 10
BTC each. As long as it's not withdrawn (meaning it's only used to transfer between accounts at the same bank), it's good business for the bank!
Withdrawing everything won't be possible, and would be called a bank run. Just like in fiat.
Luckily, you can just opt to store your Bitcoins on your own address, and unlike fiat money, you can still make near instant payments without using a bank.
A fractional reserve system could work (if people were stupid enough to use it for bitcoin), but banks couldn't create new bitcoin out of thin air to fund loans like they do with fiat.
Banks don't create actual banknotes either
When it comes to loans from banks, Bitcoins will be like banknotes, and anything else that happens within the bank will be as crazy as regulators allow.
I saw this topic before, but didn't post yet. I got sommoned by
Maggiordome:
Try to ask LoyceV and Omegastarscream on whats the set-up or main requirements on having no collateral loans.
Mine is very simple: I offer
Little Lightning Loans, worth around $1 only. It's meant to test LN, not for serious loans (yet).
There's not much I can lose, and until now I haven't encountered a scammer who went through the trouble of setting up a Lightning wallet.