Loanbase
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Loanbase was a Bitcoin peer-to-peer lending platform operating since September 2013 as BitLendingClub. It was among the first P2P lending platforms to leverage Bitcoin's fast, near-free cross-border movement and became one of the largest P2P Bitcoin lending platforms by volume — displacing BTCjam as market leader in June 2015. On September 23, 2015, the team rebranded the P2P platform to 'Loanbase', reserving the BitLendingClub name while planning a separate 'Loanbase Platform' for small-business loans in Brazil.
02 / Loanbase FAILURE REASONS
Why it failed
Two blows in 2016 ended the Loanbase brand. First, a February 2016 security breach: hackers exploited a vulnerability in the site's WordPress blog, compromising user accounts and stealing 8-14 BTC (up to 20 BTC); Loanbase reimbursed affected users after taking the site down for a day. Then, in September 2016, the team reversed course entirely — moving the P2P lending platform back to the BitLendingClub domain and keeping 'Loanbase' for the Brazil small-business loan platform, which never actually worked. The Loanbase product was effectively shut down within a year of its launch.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Product or service closed
BitLendingClub announced shutdown after Bulgarian regulatory requirements made operation unfeasible; deBanked notes the company had rebranded to LoanBase in Sep 2015 then back—museum Loanbase identity matches this P2P bitcoin lender wind-down.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Loanbase wound down in 2016 amid the P2P-Bitcoin-lending crunch.
- 02
No financial details of the shutdown were disclosed.