Update

4 Jumada al Thani, 1435

4-4-14

Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim,

   Asalam Aleikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh,


   Dear shareholders,

     Thank you for your patience in waiting for this update.

Assets

Cash - 13.12217619 BTC

6.6 retained for website development

Income from Nasty seats since last dividend- 0.0739076 BTC

Donations - 0.75 BTC

Total Dividend Payout - 0.8239076



        As for some of the projects mentioned in the last update- I was hoping to get some interest from shareholders in these projects but I didn't hear anything. These projects are also probably too ambitious considering our personnel and budget restrictions. However, our income is dwindling because I have not had much time to do lending. I lent to several people who did not repay loans, but this was with my own money, not IBB's. This was good, since I learned a lot about lending at my own expense rather than IBB's.

        As I mentioned in the last update, I think we should still be focusing on lowering barriers to entry for the Islamic world into the bitcoin ecosystem. Right now the main barrier to entry is education. That is why I think it is important that we focus on information. Writing tutorials and faqs on bitcoin is a good service, and we can also derive advertising revenue from these services.

        Another idea, which is more within the scope of our capabilities right now, is to provide a multilingual bitcoin news service. The aim is to get more people interested to learn about and use bitcoin by providing news articles in their native language. For this purpose I propose hiring translators to translate select articles to the languages most spoken by Muslims in the world- Arabic, Persian, Malay, and Urdu.

      A bitcoin faucet may also be a means of boosting revenue. I suggest making this faucet a social service by motivating people to run the faucet to operate the faucet by answering trivia questions that remind the user of useful knowledge. The user would be rewarded after answering a series of questions with a small payment of something like .00001. On each page with the question, there would also be a number of ads.

        So to sum up, I am suggesting building a website that provides community service with 3 aspects- digital currency education, digital currency news, and a bitcoin faucet that dispenses bitcoin in exchange for mental exercises that increase knowledge. This is beneficial to all parties- people increase in knowledge, the IBB collects ad revenue, and the advertisers get increased exposure for their products. A project of this scale is within the scope of our current capabilities, while wallet services and exchange services are not.


        We will have to fill a number of positions.

  - Web designer for setting up the website and the faucet

  - Translators for adding language support for multiple languages to increase our traffic

  - Regional representatives to promote the IBB website in country or language specific forums and chatrooms

  - Loan officers for managing micro loans

   Loan officers will have to be volunteers who could take a percentage of gratuities. They would be provided with a small amount of funds from the IBB which they would then disperse in smaller increments to borrowers. Any donations that the IBB receives for this public service could then be split, 50% to shareholders, and 50% to the loan officer who made the loan. This entails risk, so the loan officer would have to be reputable or come recommended by a trusted shareholder or member.

   To increase publicity and get people using our news services, we will also be issuing and handing out IBB secure cheques with a small amount of bitcoin to encourage people to get bitcoin wallets and to learn about using bitcoin.
       
      After much thought, this is the best plan I could come up with for increasing our revenue. Any comments or suggestions are very welcome. If anyone is interested in any of the positions listed above, please send me a PM.

  Thank you for your patience and I apologize for the delay!

     Money is not the point of life- but the trick is, if you can convince people that it is, you can make yourself rich in the process.


   I always think we the story of the Israelites escaping Egypt is so important in the world's religions- and why are religions from the Mid East so dominant? Why didn't west african religion or religion from the south pacific spread over the whole world? The fertile river valleys of the middle east are probably where people migrating out of Africa landed and it's where civilization has been the longest as far as we know.

   The Egyptians were really wealthy and had a hierarchical society- the closer to the Pharoah you were, the more power you got. Power is the freedom to do what you want, and property confers power. This is the problem in the liberal paradigm of liberty- liberty is a zero sum game- some people increase their liberty at the expense of others.

      The reason people want money is to satisfy their desires, but the more you feed the desires, the bigger they get, like feeding a fire. If you drive a fast car it is fun for a while, but soon you want a faster car. If you are doing cocaine, you just want more and more. If you have a hot woman, you want a hotter one.

   That's why the spiritual teachers have taught that the key to happiness is not money, but appreciation. If we focus on being grateful for what we have and making the best of it, we will be happy. A good way to be grateful is to remember that we didn't create any of what we have, and to remember where all of what we have, body, health, air, water, food, family, where it came from.

      The American revolution was essentially about property- the feudal system was that God owns everything, and the Pope or Cardinal says that the King is the King because God says so, and then everyone just leases their property from the King. The American revolution said that anybody can own stuff- this was also the same basic message of Islam. So probably these ideas worked their way up into Europe, resulting in the Enlightenment and then the American revolution. But people are missing the message that property is not the purpose of life- the purpose of life is to remember where we came from, and to use our property not just for unlimited personal gratification, but to use for to do good. Property is just a means to live and an opportunity- what we give we take with us when we die, and what we keep for ourselves we leave behind.

  Please provide some info on your hashing power and daily income to show how three antminers can generate .5 btc in less than 2 weeks. If you can make enough to buy the 4th unit in less than two weeks, why do you need a loan?

  For a loan of this size I guess I would need proof of income, your id, and a chat on skype. You would need to be able to show that you could pay it back within one month. Collateral of some kind would help.

Well, what we really need is someone who can help us to set up a faucet that will tap into the flow of web traffic for speakers of these languages. We need someone who can be more involved to help design a strategy up front, possibly for a bitcoin news page with a faucet and a trivia game with bitcoin prizes. We would pay part of the money up front and the rest on completion of the job.

   Hi,
      The Islamic Bank of Bitcoin is looking for ways to increase bitcoin access in the Islamic world. If you are interested on working on translating pages or faucets into the languages listed above, please post here or pm!

Okay,  sorry, I just got a little bit jaded after my first taste of being a lender!

   Glad that I could be of assistance, I'd be happy to talk about anything else if you have other questions!

   Yeah, this would be a joint venture and would be halal (lawful). This means that the lender shares the risk as well as the profit with the borrower... right now mining seems pretty risky, but what's your pitch? As far as I know, almost all mining operation are only profitable if bitcoin price goes up, which would edge into speculation territory, which is not lawful.

.06 btc sent to 1btcYQznKGfh1SGkfVWjDQ2r1sjoNZA3V

please repay within 4 weeks, sooner is better!

 Thank you!

   What is your address?

  wetseals,

  how are you making money to repay? what is your address?

------------------------------------------------------ UPDATE --------------------------------------------------------------------


    Terms of loans are changing due to my experiences- Loan repayment is maximum 4 weeks, and maximum amount of loan is .5 BTC


   I had not been giving loans due to a loan that was not repaid, but now am offering loans again.

  The bank belongs to the shareholders, shares are available on cryptostocks. I am a shareholder. If any of the shareholders have suggestions on how to better run the bank, I am open to them. Please post in the IBB thread in the Securities sub-heading.

   Sorry, at this time we are not considering loans to people with very new accounts, unless you have an ultra detailed plan of how you are going to repay it with some several pieces of concrete evidence.

UPDATE

    All requests are read and considered. Repeating requests without offering additional information will reduce your chances of getting a loan. If you are a new member you can count on not getting a loan unless you have a really convincing story of what you are doing and some convincing links that prove it.

  All requests are read and considered and I apologize if I don't take the time to write kind refusals to every request. No reply should be understood as denial of the request.

   That being said, if you make a request and receive a new reply, feel free to explain in more detail exactly what it is you are doing, and how you intend to pay the loan back. The more information you provide, the more likely you are to receive a loan.

  

.04 BTC sent to     14sd2X8MUmRy8RMcszka1V74b6hGUfqjnw

to repay to 19a4Kubu9iV6392uEma2JwWb53ji2t2AQc in 2 weeks.

     There are more than enough resources on the planet. There are NOT enough resources for everyone to live like Europeans and Americans. But the simple fact is you don't need to live like that to be happy. I have seen families of 9 people living in a 1 bedroom apartment and happier than most Americans. Because they don't have so much stuff and they don't constantly see people who have way more than them to get jealous, or watch TV to see glamorous lifestyles that make them want more. Overpopulation is a question of WANTS not of needs.

    

  I declare that there is no God but the One True God and that God sets the bitcoin price. No whale buys nor dumps without the permission of the Supreme.

   

.03 BTC sent to     14DbKTEWoRFoysDuhSkRjLu8LF4HuJvsvU

To repay in 7 days to 19a4Kubu9iV6392uEma2JwWb53ji2t2AQc