We started this project at the Bitcoin 2013 Conference Hackathon in May and have been working on it since. The idea is to get people started with Bitcoin easily through friends. I'm close to 100% repayment rate on the loans I've made, though not everyone pays back in cash!
If bitcoin succeeds, IMO one "satoshi" (0.000000001 btc) could be worth what one dollar is worth today. So you might just be giving everyone 1 million dollars ;).
I know you are just spit-balling, but that value for a satoshi would put the total value of all 21 million bitcoins at 2.1 quadrillion dollars, which appears to be about 200 times the value of all USD in existence.:)
I don't have a Facebook account, so I can't sign up. I think this is probably true of a lot of Bitcoin users--for a lot of Bitcoin users, Bitcoin is a way to stay off the grid, and being on Facebook would defeat the purpose.
My suggestion is to provide a way to sign up without Facebook.
Bitcoin... a monetary system that requires internet connectivity and CPU usage... in which every transaction is recorded forever and the database is replicated by all participants... is "off the grid"?
(Disclaimer : I'm a fervent Bitcoin supporter, I like its pseudonymous property and discard any anonymat claims. I've never used zerocoin because I don't have any use for it.)
While its true for a lot of Bitcoin users, one of our goals was to make bitcoin more accessible to the public and the average person who is interested in bitcoin but doesn't quite know how to get started.
Agreed that being on Facebook takes away anonymity, which is one of Bitcoin's benefits. There are also many great non-anonymous uses for Bitcoin- "free PayPal", for example. That's the angle we're taking in this app.
So, donations to charity, "business" or no? For the donor. Obviously for the charity, it is.
>Don't mix business & friendship or you'll lose both
I started a 501(c)(3)-pending nonprofit. My board members are my friends, because I know that they are morally upright, mindful, and therefore will act as a reliable second pair of eyes to keep me from doing something illegal, immoral, or both. For now, it seems like having my friends help me out with this business has strengthened our friendships.
There's nothing stopping you from loaning, say, 1.0 BTC and asking for 1.1 BTC to be paid back later, but Bitcoin does not have any mechanism to help enforce such loans. There's a forum dedicated to it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=65.0 Many people are skeptical of Bitcoin loans since the expected rate of return of holding BTC exceeds the rate of return of almost all legitimate businesses.
Many people are skeptical of Bitcoin loans since the expected rate of return of holding BTC exceeds the rate of return of almost all legitimate businesses.
To steal a tptacek line, "I hope to make the starburst of points which follow by implication rather than by explicit statement."
Interest is not only to protect the bank (or lender) against inflation. It's also (one of ) the way that the bank gets paid.
For a moment suppose that there is no inflation, no fraud, no bankrupts and no administrative commissions: If the bank gives you $100 and you pay in total $110 then the profit of the bank is $10.
Interest is just a function of a loan agreement - it is an entirely separate issue from the available supply of the currency in question.
Even if you borrow monopoly money from a specific monopoly set, there can still be interest required on the loan. It may be impossible for you to fulfil your loan obligations if your supply of whatever currencies the lender will accept (which does not necessarily only have to be the original loan currency) is limited, but that's a separate issue.
Think of the "Bitcoin economy" as a border-less sovereign country with a floating, fixed-supply currency. This country would still have interest rates, and those rates would still be a function of everyone else's interest rates in a way fundamentally related to the FX rate (complicated, but not insurmountably, by the lack of a low-risk Bitcoin counterparty, thereby holding back the development of Bitcoin collateral and lending markets).
Awesome idea! If you just gotten your first bitcoin, you can immediately put it into good use by purchasing the Humble Bundle now (they accept bitcoins): https://www.humblebundle.com/
Right now, Facebook is the only good way to know that "Bob Jones" is really my friend named "Bob Jones".
This idea depends on that level social trust. I wouldn't loan out bitcoins to strangers. Just friends who want to learn about bitcoin, as they won't screw me over. Even if they don't return the loan in btc, they might buy me a drink.
When I shared my link on Facebook, it wouldn't show a thumbnail with the HTTPS URL but I changed it to an HTTP URL and it appeared. The thumbnail/preview is very attractive and I think it'll help get people to click. :)
Thanks! Interestingly, one piece of feedback we got was that the site made bitcoins seem like play money. They definitely have real-world value though. I just used it to pay a friend back for an Amazon order.
I had the privilege of meeting these guys while they were developing the initial version of the app. It has come a long way! Excited to watch it take off.
