Well, in the US, credit card debt is normally a loan of goods or services, when it's not a cash advance. So it's consumer credit. I'm not sure what the definition is wherever you live.
Regardless, loaning Bitcoins isn't required for such services; and they can support a Bitcoin bank perfectly well.
Ok, you can continue making up your own definitions. According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan credit card debt is an unsecured loan, which i already pointed out. This will be my last post regarding this subject, i'm not here to argue about definitions.
If you can show me a way how a bitcoin bank can pay
1. interest to its depositors or
2. earn money by lending
i will be happy to continue with the discussion.
alexk
I can show it:
A deposits 100 BTC and is promised to get 110 back in a year.
B loans 100 BTC and promise to pay 120 back in a year.
After one year the bank has earned 10 BTC.
This example is not fractional reserve as the bank got assets covering all its promises. The bank is just a boker of loans between it's customers. A could of course lose his deposit if B never pays and this forces the bank out of business, but even if the bank just stored the BTC they could be stolen by a hacker. Deposits are never 100% safe.