Show HN: Spread bitcoins by lending to friends

http://bitcoinswithfriends.com/

by bearwithclaws • 13 years ago

67 53 13 years ago

bitcoinswithfriends.com

louiscipher• 13 years ago

This is an awesome idea. I just with that they allow account creation outside of facebook.

alxbrun• 13 years ago

argumentum2• 13 years ago

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.

mariusz331• 13 years ago

you might get a cease and desist from zynga but don't give in!

songzme• 13 years ago

Great idea! Now Im going to Spread Bitcoins by lending to friends

jessehea• 13 years ago

This is a fantastic way to spread BTC over a social layer! Great idea

BrainInAJar3• 13 years ago

Finally, a way to short BTC!

dualogy• 13 years ago

But how would you hedge your shorts?

dnautics2• 13 years ago

by placing a corresponding bid on mtgox and paying back your friend in bitcoin. It's kind of a dick thing to do to your friend, though, I suppose.

yayitswei5• 13 years ago

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!

bearwithclaws3• 13 years ago

OP here: we are also doing a launch special where every new sign ups will get 0.001 BTC on us.

If you don't own any bitcoins yet, you'll get your first one with BWF :)

argumentum2• 13 years ago

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 ;).

Aqueous• 13 years ago

Cool beginnings of a micro-credit economy for bitcoin.

oxwrist• 13 years ago

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/

blueprint• 13 years ago

Big ups to you guys for launching!!

Two of the guys who built this are my pals. Very dedicated makers - they'll look after you.

bearwithclaws3• 13 years ago

Thanks Paul!!

tlrobinson3• 13 years ago

Very nice. Definitely one of the better looking Bitcoin services out there.

yayitswei5• 13 years ago

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.

EGreg• 13 years ago

You should check out http://ripple.com

bernatfp• 13 years ago

People should avoid Ripple. Building an economy under a system that is in hands of one company isn't a very good idea.

pdog• 13 years ago

Isn't Ripple a decentralized system, and weren't there plans to open source it?

cuttooth• 13 years ago

The 1000 friends minimum thing is hilariously high.

bearwithclaws3• 13 years ago

Ah! It's a joke (albeit a bad one, by me). The minimum friends limit to join is actually 50.

daverecycles• 13 years ago

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. :)

yayitswei5• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback Dave. We're looking into the thumbnail issue, is anyone else not seeing the thumbnail?

kerkeslager• 13 years ago

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.

ErsatzVerkehr• 13 years ago

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"?

milesokeefe• 13 years ago

It's the closest you can get to off the grid.

btbuildem2• 13 years ago

I think they're using FB as a trust proxy..

yayitswei5• 13 years ago

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.

richerd• 13 years ago

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.

We are using Facebook as a trust network.

rmc• 13 years ago

Conversely, this could be a way to bring bitcoin to the attention of people who aren't already in on it.

intelliot• 13 years ago

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.

yayitswei5• 13 years ago

Thanks for your help at the hackathon Elliot! You're still user number 3 in the database.

btbuildem2• 13 years ago

I've always wondered, is interest possible on BTC loans? Technically, it should not be, since there's a limited amount of coins.

Are you qualified/classified/stamped/branded/innoculated/whatever to comply with US regulation bullshit?

What's your business model here? Keep a % of the loan?

wmf• 13 years ago

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.

patio11• 13 years ago

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."

gus_massa• 13 years ago

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.

vidarh• 13 years ago

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.

JumpCrisscross2• 13 years ago

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).

bobbyongce• 13 years ago

This is a great idea! This is one simple way to get started with Bitcoin and make Bitcoin more mainstream for the average person.

quackerhacker• 13 years ago

Think this is cool, please consider a Twitter sign up at the least, (not sure about others) I prefer not to reactivate my FB.

pattle• 13 years ago

I really really like the design, good job

Show HN: Spread bitcoins by lending to friends

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