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Let's suppose that Mr. John Doe has somehow managed to accumulate 10 BTC. He holds on to them for dear life as it's his one and only savings/lifeline. He has essentially zero fiat money. Only a bank account. His coins exist on an encrypted wallet.dat, created on a dedicated computer and redundantly backed up.

John has heard of all this "defi" stuff, but doesn't understand how it works in practice. He has spent many hours reading and asking questions related to this, but has still not been able to get it all straightened out. He just gets frustrated and irritated trying to make sense of the fuzzy sales talk found on all these slick websites.

Importantly, John has no ability to do "KYC/AML", and doesn't trust centralized entities either way. John is fine with providing his full name and bank details to any entity -- the only problem is producing a "photo id", since he hasn't got one and doesn't want to ever get one again. This is important to John.

John wishes to somehow get a steady monthly "income" from his ten digital gold bars (Bitcoins, that is), most likely in the form of some sort of "interest". John is not well educated in economic terms and therefore might not be using the correct financial terms.

Is there some way that John could enter some kind of command into his Bitcoin Core which creates a "smart contract" directly on the Bitcoin blockchain which, in some manner, "locks" the coins from being spent by him, but still doesn't make him lose control of them (the private keys stay with John)? That is, so that "some other entity" in some way derives value from this so that they will send John some reasonable sum of fiat money to his bank account monthly or yearly?

And if this is possible, how exactly does that other entity derive value from this smart contract if they don't control John's coins? They are just "locked" in the sense that John cannot spend them for some pre-determined amount of time, or until both parties agree to dissolve the smart contract. (This is what I'm guessing from my understanding.)

And assuming this is possible, what amount of USD would John get per month from such a setup? Are we talking $1,000 or $100 or even $10? John doesn't think it's worth it if it's less than $1,000, which has become sort of a "Western bare-minimum monthly income" for basic survival. Even if people trust these "smart contracts", there's always the risk of a bug or glitch which would make him lose all his hard-earned satoshis. That is a nightmare scenario for John.

In fact, the "monthly allowance" doesn't necessarily have to be paid in fiat money. It can just as well be Bitcoin or really just any altcoin supported by Bisq, so that John can trade them himself to end up with fiat in the end. If that makes a difference. (Maybe there's less regulations and legal obstacles for an entity to hand out some weird coin rather than dealing with bank transfers.)

I would highly appreciate if somebody could explain what I'm missing about this, sticking to John in the situation described here.

Please do not redirect this to an existing question; I have more than likely read it and the answers already.

2 Answers2

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No this isn't possible.

Firstly Bitcoin core's graphical user interface doesn't support complex transactions

Secondly no one is going to give John an income without receiving something in return that is more valuable to them. In particular some control over collateral that can be used to generate income now or in future by some conventional mechanism.

RedGrittyBrick
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It's not possible in the way you suggest.

Crypto lending services usually work by having the borrower offer some collateral, and the borrower gets full control of the crypto assets they are borrowing, with the collateral being offered in case the borrower defaults on the loan. You are offered "bonds" in exchange for lending your crypto assets, and the "bonds" represent the value you have offered for loan. Nobody is going to pay you interest merely for having your crypto assets locked up if they can't use those assets.

Such de-fi contracts may be possible on a future 2nd layer to Bitcoin, but is not possible in Bitcoin natively (so it won't be possible using Bitcoin Core). These 2nd layer solutions include sidechains such as Sovryn -- if you want to lend Bitcoin specifically, and you don't want to use a centralized service, you may be interested in looking into these sidechain projects.

ieatpizza
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  • HodlHodl Lending works without KYC, user lending owns one key in a 2 of 3 multisig: https://lend.hodlhodl.com/ (You can lend only stablecoins right now and borrow stablecoins with bitcoin as collateral but lending bitcoin will be possible) there are few other options available to get yield by providing liquidity including on-chain (Joinmarket), Sidechain (Sovryn, TDEX) and layer 2 DEX protocols using LN like OpenDEX may support it as well –  Feb 15 '21 at 11:45
  • @Prayank Well, that centralized website has a "Sign up" button and asks for e-mail addresses and usernames and has a Google reCAPTCHA thing on it. Hardly anonymous or "defi" in any way? – John Doe Feb 15 '21 at 12:02
  • @Prayank "If you want **to lend Bitcoin** specifically, unfortunately your only option **at this time** is to go through centralized lending services..." From quickly checking on HodlHodl, they do not **currently** allow **lending Bitcoin**, as you acknowledge yourself. Please retract your downvote. – ieatpizza Feb 15 '21 at 12:20
  • If you can correct few things in your answer I can retract the downvote. 1. Not possible in Bitcoin natively 2. No contract has been deployed yet 3. Your only option is to use centralized and KYC services. All these points are **INCORRECT** –  Feb 15 '21 at 12:39
  • @john-doe It is peer to peer, no KYC requirements and users hold one key each in every contract. Not sure what is your definition of DeFi. –  Feb 15 '21 at 12:41
  • @Prayank It uses a central website, with accounts, where I need to register and log in and they have the e-mail address and username and password. How can you get this to "decentralized"? – John Doe Feb 15 '21 at 12:44
  • @Prayank I don't understand what part is wrong. All 3 of those statements are true and what I wrote in my answer. If you disagree, please show me a single project that allows lending Bitcoin (not stablecoins or altcoins) without requiring a third party arbiter (aka decentralized) because I'm interested in using it too. – ieatpizza Feb 15 '21 at 12:44
  • It's already discussed and shared several times here and in other answers. All three points are INCORRECT. It's a fact not my opinion or disagreement. –  Feb 15 '21 at 12:47
  • @Prayank Then it's easy for you to just cite the name of a project that does it? It's a pretty high in demand feature.. you keep saying "it exists" but have so far not yet just named a project... – ieatpizza Feb 15 '21 at 12:49
  • @john-doe Read this: https://t.me/HodlHodl/19358 and centralized exchanges don't need to use 2 of 3 multisig. They can just ask users to deposit bitcoin like Binance. –  Feb 15 '21 at 12:50
  • @ieatpizza calm down and read everything again, that you wrote and the things I wrote. In case you are looking to lend bitcoin right now: Use Sovryn (Bitcoin Sidechain) or Provide Liquidity by using TDEX protocol or borrow USDT with bitcoin as collateral and lend it on HodlHodl –  Feb 15 '21 at 12:53
  • @Prayank Fair enough, I guess a project like Sovryn, once production-ready, would meet the question requirement. I will edit my answer to mention it :) please retract the downvote now? – ieatpizza Feb 15 '21 at 13:05