I felt nostalgic as I logged in to loanbase to check if there was any loan worth investing in; to my surprise there were only eight open listings. What once was a thriving community of investors and borrowers has become an online desert.
I joined loanbase when it was called BitLendingClub and even though there was a high percentage of scammy loans (around 8%), there were also some honest people who always paid on time.
I also checked BTCJam and the situation is somehow similar, not many loan options and very low activity.
Wayniloans seems like a fresh new option, their activity is also low but you can chose to lend money directly to the platform on "guaranteed money back" loans.
So, what happened?
I believe there are two main reasons why people stopped using lending sites:
1.- Scammers can´t be hold accountable: No matter what measures the website takes to filter out bad reputation loans, the fact is that anyone could be scammed even by a person who already paid back 10 loans and has a A+ reputation. I saw a lot of “famous” users go rogue once they realized how easy it was to just walk away with the money.
Let´s be honest even if you have the real home address of the scammer are you really going to travel to Nigeria or Venezuela to ask for your money back!?...mmm, no I don’t think you are, I doubt anyone would. Hiring a lawyer is another option but he will probably charge you more than the 0.5 btc you usually lend each user on those sites, so that is useless too.
2.- More options: Why would you risk your precious BTC on loans that could default when you could make 10% APR on SBD, or even more lending to margin traders on Poloniex.
Conclusion
Success on the crypto world comes and goes faster than college relationships, it is a shame that these sites have lost most of their user base and it seems that scammers have, once again, ruined it for the rest of us.