This funny thing happened to me two years ago.

I wanted to buy something non-virtual.  It was pretty expensive.  It has four walls and a roof, and all sorts of nice things like heating and cooling and electricity.  It's often referred to as a "house."

I didn't have enough cash to buy it.  So I went to some people and I asked to borrow hundreds of thousands of fiat dollars.  I offered them a 3.5% annual rate of return -- something comparable to what I discussed above -- and proved to them that I was a pretty good risk and was likely to pay back anything I borrowed.

And you know, the funniest thing happened:  they said yes.

Who'd have thought?

For a better example of borrowing billions of dollars in order to make a profit, go read about how George Soros caused the collapse of the British Pound in order to make a huge profit for his hedge fund

http://internationalinvest.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/Black-Wednesday-George-Soros-Bet-Against-Britain.htm

edit here's a better link - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2773265/Billionaire-who-broke-the-Bank-of-England.html

he borrowed about 6.5 billion GBP to play games with the currency.  He won.  Big.