There could be, they just won't be positive rates. Negative and zero rates have been discussed on this board previously. Some believe that this can work, but they tend to back this only with beliefs rather than any kind of economic propensity. Alternatively, lending money in a bitcoin-like system will have to be for extremely short durations. Kind of the opposite of what deflation purportedly achieves ("sane economic growth")--finding the quickest, most economic and environmentally disastrous way to profit regardless of the consequences.

Otherwise, there is simply no point in investing with bitcoins in the tragedy of the commons situation that it will inevitably encounter. You really aren't going to get many of the established here to agree that this will be the case, because then they are agreeing that bitcoin will ultimately fail. So they will either divert or ignore the issue. I've watched this happen for 2 years now, and I don't expect the mentality to change.

In my signature is a link for a proposed design that fixes this plus a multitude of other problems with bitcoin. You may be interested in it.