Peer-to-peer microlending community - For 3rd World zidisha.org

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[url=https://www.zidisha.org/]https://www.zidisha.org/[/url]

This sort of thing looks very important. They think Feathercoin may be able to help.

corather

Micro loans are hugely successful. A great many people have benefited from loaning to those in third world nations where the banking system is archaic at best or corrupt at worst.

I remember seeing a TV story about it on PBS several years ago. Maybe a Frontline story or something, I can’t be certain.

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Well. I haven’t talked about it, wasn’t even aware, but it’s a figure of speech. This is truly remarkable.

another_user

i would help for sure.if i can somehow.using feathercoins to do it would be awesome!

Blueskies

[quote name=“wrapper0feather” post=“41158” timestamp=“1386424202”]
[url=https://www.zidisha.org/]https://www.zidisha.org/[/url]

This sort of thing looks very important. They think Feathercoin may be able to help.
[/quote]

Wrapper0feather invited me to this topic.
I have been a lender at zidisha for over a year. They have been growing fast.
A similar site is kiva.org (have no experience with them).
For a more complete list: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microfinance_organizations]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microfinance_organizations[/url]

Maybe I was misunderstood when I mentioned zidisha. I am not a representative for them, nor am I living in Africa, I just wanted to mention that cryptocurrency could be(come) useful for these organizations.
Based on the feedback I have seen on the zidisha platform, they sometimes seem to struggle to get the money to certain countries, and the borrowers may have to travel 50km to make a repayment on their loan.
In countries like Kenya, mobile payment systems have been growing very fast ( see m-pesa: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-pesa]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-pesa[/url]), which shows the enormous potential for micro-payment systems in the 3rd world, but in many other countries there still isn’t anything like that.

Can cryptocurrencies get a foot in the door? Maybe Kenya would be the best place to start, because the population is already used to mobile payments, and there is already a network of mpesa agents where people go to deposit or withdraw from their mobile wallet. Maybe these local agents can be convinced to start a similar service for ftc.

I think the big challenge will be to make ftc safe and practical for the them to use. To explain local farmers how to encrypt their ftc wallet may be a bridge too far.

B

Kevlar

These things are generally a great idea, but they have serious problems with using crypto-currency.

Let’s say you take out a loan for 5 BTC, due in 6 months. You get the BTC, and sell it for cash.

6 months later, BTC has gone from 140 to 1,000. You’re now expected to pay back this loan at a rate of 9,000% interest.

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I was thinking of a safe value transfer, where some 3rd World areas have no bank.

The other thing is, if the Feathercoin network were being used by some established entity to transfer value, it would be kick start the network for more wider use.

Especially then as a potential safe currency in countries with hyper inflation. Yes, the Microlenders would get an early investor bonus if they got involved, it is built into the Satoshi protocol and is needed to encourage the uptake.

i.e. To use the network they must buy mined coins, so they stabilise the price to use. Speculation is enabled by the low numbers of early users and the ability of a small number of players to disproportionally effect the market.

Once the coin is being more widely used, it will automatically dampen price variability.

It would be great if potential users came up with ideas how Feathercoin can help. So we can work on building a Statement of Requirements of the required features, to make concurrency useful to the micro lending community.

Tuck Fheman

[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“42247” timestamp=“1386628213”]
6 months later, BTC has gone from 140 to 1,000. You’re now expected to pay back this loan at a rate of 9,000% interest.
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I’ll leave my opinion out of this, but there is some history to this scenario (with another online venture that did this) that didn’t work out so well for others.