A response to BTCJams response to Simons Open Letter.

A response to BTCJams response to Simons Open Letter.

>A Response to Simon’s Open Letter
>
>Dear Simon,
>
>We would like to thank you for being an active member of our community and for taking the time and to write an open >letter to us that you have clearly put heart into.
>
>We are very grateful for all of our investor’s support and everybody who’s been with us for this entire time. The >platform is growing rapidly:  We are now close to 20,000 users, have made loans over 23,000 BTC and have a credit >scoring algorithm that helps investors realize fantastic, 19% year over year returns on average.
>
>BTCJam has a vision that is huge. We try to build an open platform for everybody to lend and borrow financial value >with no borders, limits, minimums, restrictions and minimal fees.
>

Whouw, hey man, do you still have contact to the carpet? Or are you already flying on some cloud without contact to the ground?

The last time i heard someone talking about a "huge vision", i was someone who constantly seeked investors to invest tons of money to make him able to play the big guy, because thats was his business should be. Erm....

>A very large part of this vision is due to our lenders who not only make this vision a possibility, but also provide >us with feedback to improve or change. BTCJam is a business with limited resources, that has to be extremely careful >and smart about how we spend our resources on further developing the platform.
>

Limited resources. Hey you know what. _We_ are your recource. Without us Lenders (we in the Bitcoin Investment Association prefer the term Investors), you are just nothing. Some lame site on the net like a billion of others. Kepp that in mind, in every single second when you're at work.

>
>Our investors are one part of BTCJam, and we diversify our time to each part in order to maintain growth and >stability within the platform.
>

Please could you name the other parts to which time need to diversified? What i can see as your customer is just... nothing. Please give us a clue.

>
>One thing that has been a contstant learning experience for us is to balance transparency vs. privacy. In other >words, to decide how much to show about borrowers or investors to increase trust amongst everybody but also >protecting your individual rights to privacy.
>
>Let me address your points below to give you an idea:
>
>
>>Don’t make money from scammers. Take your cut from loan repayments, not at the time a loan is funded.
>
>We are a company that needs to pay employees, servers and other fees and we have those expenses whether we have a >month with particularly good repayment rates or not. We are not a charity and want to survive, which is in the >long-term interest of everybody involved. On top of that, our current repayment rates are around 90% - so this only >affects a small amount of loans, and other businesses in the space have a similar origination fee model.
>

Hey, if your repayment rates are that good, what is exactly the problem to switch to the more customer friendly fee model? Please, tell me that.

No one of us is just here because of some charity or kindness. So what's _our_ profit on paying your fee for every single scammer?

>
>>Provide information on how much of a loan has been repaid
>While this is currently reflected in the credit score, we are evaluating if and how we can show this on the site.
>

No one has an insight about how your "Credit Score" is calculated. But we all have seen suspicious Ratings which no one understands.. So, please make the full rating mechanism public. Even if you count in some points out of your own belly feelings. It's important for us as investors to know how you get your numbers and ratings.

>
>>Provide information on how much debt a borrower is in, when they are taking out a new loan
>see above
>

Yep, see above. If you want our money, we want your numbers..

>
>>Incentivize borrowers to repay their loans before taking out new ones
>Borrowers with a lot of outstanding loans will feel the impact on the credit score. As an open platform, we want >people to be able to weather difficult financial conditions, which sometimes requires several loans. We believe that >a low credit score and higher suggested interest rates are a strong incentive for people to pay back their existing >loans first.
>
>

As above, your credit score is just some magical rating out of a cloud of magic mist.... Please change that asap. ;)
And by the way, as you can see for yourself on your site, it virtually does not matter what rating a user has. There are people which get awesome A and B ratings and even featured loans, without any proof which we can review.
And even people with bad D ratings get up to 8btc funded because - the hassle to check more in depth on a user is just way to big. And to many bitcoiners are just to blind after getting catched by whatever aspect of a loan.

Again, change that please. ASAP. ;)

>
>>Show a borrower’s bitcointalk and otc-wot links publicly
>Not all borrowers would like the public to know that they are in financial need.
>

Heh, if someone is in financial needs and want to hide that. There are way bigger problems than getting a loan.

People which try to hide such stuff, are at least suspicious. _IMHO_

>
>>Allow borrowers to show their linkedin and facebook profile links publicly if they so choose, to improve the trust >of their investors
>We also do not want to put the borrowers who are not willing to share their identity with the whole world at a >disadvantage with the ones who are. The credit score reflects the risk and can be trusted quite well - which we are >seeing with our 90% repayment rates.
>

Wait, what? You prefer to force everyone on anonymity, because of some people prefer to be anonymous?

Do you remember, that we are talking about _OUR_ money here? Did you recognize, that _we as investors_ prefer to know where we put our money in? Have you registered that it is even important to know that to prevent getting involved in crimes and money laundering?

Do you get the point?

>
>>Show how much collateral (bitcoin) a user has invested in the site, and how much they have yet to recieve, so that >investors can see they have a vested interest in the community
>We think it is very risky for users to borrow and invest at the same time. What if the investments they made >default? Suddenly they have an excuse to not pay back their own loan. This can lead to a domino effect that we want >to prevent as much as possible.
>

Heyhey, slow down. Alexis told me, that i'm the most diversified investor on your site. In parallel, i still have 0,55btc in debt. You really want to tell me i should stop investing in other people loans because i have a loan open for myself? Whut? You really _do not want me invest in other people loans on your site, paying your bills_??

>
>>Engage with the community. Ask investors what they would like to see in your product, and implement what they ask for.
>We are listening very actively to our user voice, our facebook pages, reddit, bitcointalk, twitter and other sites >where people are engaging with us.
>

Sorry but that is just a big fat lie. You are probably reading what we write. But i don't even believe that.

But listening? Well, not. Not a single word from us just even got recognized by you til this message.

And - if i will take most of the conclusion part before we come to that point - anything you write in your message is just:

"We've readed your messages and still don't care about what you want because we know what _we_ want."

Yeah ok ..... message received.

>
>I hope this answer explains that we can’t in every instance fullfil our users need right away.
>

Sorry but you fullfill just _NOTHING_ we demand. And yes, it explains it very good and clear.

>
>As said, we need to balance the wishes of investors with the immediate and long term needs of BTCJam as a business >that seeks to provide low interest loans and fantastic returns to millions of people around the globe.
>

I think, this is the only true sentence in all these lines.

"we need to balance the wishes of investors with the immediate and long term needs of BTCJam".

Yep .. alright. You want to do something for your own. But you know that you need our money to to that?
It seems like you lost this knowledge some few months ago.

>
>Celso and the BTCJam Team

O.k. .... Lets calculate that.

You tell me, you want to to some big business. You have a huge vision which provides cheap loans for anonymous people, providing investors with just nothing but some crude ratings which you manipulate at your will.
In parallel, you promise "fantastic returns to millions of people around the globe".

Which type of return do you have in mind? It cannot be bitcoins and interest. Because, how will you manage the hold these "fantastic returns" if you prefer to have just a bunch of anonymous people as borrowers from which constantly a third comes out to be just another scammer?

It seems to me, you are just another crazy guy, deeply soaked in some mania with little or no contact to reallity at all.

And there is even some proof about that. As you still seem not to understand nor even nearly get the point, why we are so upset.

You even do not register _how upset we are_.

That's a behaviour wich is very common for manic people.

Do you need just another example?

I constantly called out for a change on the messy change showing just some percent instead the invested amount.

I asked to just revert it in that way, that every user is again able to see his own invests.

Thats completely perfect with the privacy concerns you mentioned.

But you even did not anser a single word to my request.

Why?

You say you listen. But you do simply not.

Sorry man .... really, i did now my very best, to give you the best insight about what _i_ think. And i think that a lot of investors agree. Now it's all up to you.