Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Loans in BTC
by
odolvlobo
on 14/07/2014, 16:08:21 UTC
There is no reason why fractional reserve banking could not be done with bitcoins. After all, it existed when the U.S. was on the Gold Standard.
It can't be done with bitcoin, because you cannot produce more bitcoins like you can dollar bills...And when the banks have to fufill the loan, they will have to send actual bitcoins to fund the loan....

Person A deposits 100 BTC. The bank A loans 90 BTC to person B.
Person B deposits 90 BTC. The bank B loans 81 BTC to person C.
Person C deposits 81 BTC. The bank C loans 72 BTC to person D.
Person D deposits 72 BTC. ...

Total apparent number of bitcoins in the system: 1000

That's classic fractional reserve banking and it works with dollars, bitcoins, gold, or seashells.