Question. Who is DoubleIcaras, what did they do, and why does it seem like everyone on this forum falls for this shit every week?
You can read through the link in the OP if you're really curious. He was supposed to host an event raising awareness for Bitcoin in London. He sold t-shirts (which were apparently never delivered), accepted donations, and took out loans.
This seems to happen every week because we lenders seem to often make the mistake of thinking smaller loans do not require the same effort in IDing the person and demanding to know how the BTC will be paid back as we would with larger loans.
Both Pat & I (haven't heard from others) seem to be @ ~10% default rate (with regards to # of loans, if weighted for amount loans made for, probably much lower), and AFAIK (it's true for myself, at least), they're all for relatively small loans, never large single loans. Seems there's a strong correlation there and we're dropping the ball by thinking smaller lendees have a stronger right to privacy, or perhaps we're thinking we have a right to be lazy.
Oh that person who claimed he would remake the money back from standing outside shouting about bitcoin? Yea, I don't know what anyone would trust such a scam. How was he supposed to make money anyway? Selling bitcoins?
As for the lenders, sounds like being lazy tbh.
One of our DCAO colleagues is working on a new system (it will be advertised in the Bitcoin Magazine actually) for a new secure and smart system for loans. You guys will love it.
Dollartrader has an interesting system already up, just not public, afaik. It'd make a solid attempt at verifying a person by sending a post-card to their claimed address with a code via mail. They then enter that code into their account page, and are marked as verified. Other than that, the site has a rating system, with a page for everyone, and an easier way of taking loans out and advertising them than the forum.
Otherwise, we already have lists of defaulters, but it's useless with so many unproven people requesting a loan, and that's just a lack of self-discipline on our part to give out loans to relatively unproven people. People fake pay stubs, their pictures, addresses, identity, take out "confidence loans" and repay, etc. Unless there's something totally revolutionary never done before in the new proposed system, we'll still just end up needing to turn away those without a lot of rep, I suppose. I'm hoping the free escrow service I'm offering will help convince new sellers to pop up and get involved so they'll be accepted when they request new loans.
