I’ve been thinking about this Bitcoin Pawn Shop idea, that I can’t figure out the feasibility off.
Where someone opens a lightning channel to you, and pawn the entire amount by sending it to your node. And they get some amount of $.
As they make payment on the loan, you send them sats back.
The Bitcoin pawn shop makes money for custody services until loan repaid.
Or if not repaid, channel closes and transaction settles.
But I need someone smarter than me to tell me this is stupid/genius.
Seriously. Say I need $8K right now.
I open a channel to you, for say 10m sats, and push it all to your side.
You wire transfer the amount.
I repay you slowly, and you send sats back.
You are a lender make %1 service fee.
Given bitcoin’s trajectory, you’ll never get all your sats back. You are ok with that? Or are you saying the exchange rate is fixed? If so, you have to trust the pawn shop not to disappear with your sats.
I’m not sure. That’s why I want to discuss the alternatives with others.
I think I’m considering the rate is fixed, you get back all your sats.
Like pawning a guitar. Even if the guitar becomes more expensive, you won’t get half the guitar. Or half the gold.
yeah, it definitely would be denominated in sats, and the 1% on top is on top of the sats. half of the time in fiat terms the lender is up, the other half, they are up only in sats terms.
the thing that is more sticky probably is licenses and shit for doing this, i'm pretty sure in most places there is some shit you have to do, some bond or similar, that you have to hold with some registry in order to operate a lending business.
also, 1% is not likely to break even, you have to have a higher margin than that. probably you want to vary the rate per contract at any given time based on price movement.
it's a cool idea though, full reserve lending, based on a mostly appreciating asset.
i think the hard part is going to be avoiding legal trouble.
i'm definitely interested to hear the story as it develops also. it seems to me like this could work, and be profitable enough to pay you to maintain it.
