Bloom is a fancier but also naive attempt. Nobody on that team has experience with loan origination, loan underwriting, loan rating, loan syndication, credit reporting, credit scoring, credit cards, debit cards, or debt collection. Having read the white paper, it is weirdly specific on record formats, and weirdly hazy on almost any important issue. It seems a fine example of the XKCD cartoon about physics majors. [1]
Remember when somebody who built a Magic the Gathering card exchange and then decided they could build a currency exchange? I'm not an expert [2], but that's what the Bloom.io stuff reads like to me. People joke that Bitcoin is basically the Dunning-Krugerrand, and things like Bloom don't do much to challenge that view.
[2] Although I have build financial trading software, worked on a loan accounting system focused on the underbanked, and am currently consulting for a commercial lender, so I'm not entirely ignorant.
Now, for every successful Uber, there have been 100 failed attempts at the same. Will HelloBloom be the Uber of credit reporting- can't say. But will credit reporting be disrupted by someone like Hello Bloom, definitely.
My issue here isn't with industry disruption, which I generally like. It's with hallucinatory blockchain-based hype. For years I've been hearing that Bitcoin or some other blockchain technology will disrupt money transfer and online purchasing. But Bitcoin never got any foothold in international remittances and is actually in retreat in e-commerce. Now the Bitcoin hype had metastasized into blockchain and ICO hype, but I don't think there's any more meat to it.
But if you're so sure, let's put money down. I have $500 that says no blockchain-based startup will get even 1% of the US credit reporting market in the next 5 years. We can put the bet up here: http://longbets.org
You in?
Credit reporting agencies aren't just a big ledger. They collect a lot of information from a variety of sources, verifying and evaluating them. They contextualize, evaluate, and summarize the information. They comply with extensive laws that regulate the use of the information. And then they, with obviously varying levels of success, control who has access to that information.
This work all costs money. It could surely cost less. But dumping terabytes of ungroomed personal data into a public database and then crossing our collective fingers is a startling bad idea. (If you disagree, then please put your last 5 years of financial statements, bills, and receipts unredacted in a GitHub repo and put the link here.)