Can anyone here tell me at a top level how renting a token like VERI would work? How would a coinlord retain control/ownership, and how can a lessee use the VERI and still be able to return it once they are done with it?
Veritaseum would create a smart contract to mediate the transaction. Those with tokens to rent would send them to the contract and those who needed to access a Veritaseum service which requires VERI would rent the access of the token; by sending ether to the same smart contract.
For something like the Coin reports this doesn't make much sense, but if you are trading on the P2P platform and need to stake a certain amount of VERI then this would make sense.
Out of the box ideas would include Veritaseum bidding on this project:
http://gothamist.com/2015/01/21/metrocard_1.php and then renting the VERI tokens to the subway riders for the duration of the tickets... Starbucks could offer free rides to people if they watched a video. Since the whole thing would be mediated by the blockchain this would solve a lot of issues with clickbots and fake views!