Several months ago, I learned of a website called Zopa. It’s an intermediary, similar to eBay, that allows people to directly lend and borrow money from each other. By replacing a bank as the intermediary, lenders can expect to get higher returns on their investment, and borrowers can expect to get lower interest rates on their loans. But Zopa was only in the U.K.

Now a new company called Prosper is going to do the same in the U.S. You can sign up to be a borrower and list how much money you need and what interest rate you’re willing to pay. As a lender, you can choose to whom you want your money to be paid, based on the interest rate you want and the credit worthiness of the borrower. Prosper handles credit checks on the borrower and other administrative details. This has a lot of potential. One question I’m left asking is whether or not banks are better suited for this sort of thing since they can spread the risk of default across many borrowers. With Prosper’s model, the lender personally assumes the risk of default by the borrower. (Prosper does have “groups” to help build reputation for borrowers.) Prosper is founded by a founder of E-Loan, which does mortgage loans online.

Other distributed finance sites include Marketocracy and Long Bets. Marketocracy is a market index built on the investing decisions of hundreds of expert investors. Its return has been several times the S&P 500, with a beta of 0.81. Long Bets is a fun site where experts can make predictions, years away, and bet on the outcome. For example Craig Mundie, CTO of Microsoft, predicts that “by 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotless planes.” Eric Schmidt, CEO at Google, disagrees. Each has bet $1,000. In 2030, one of them will pay up.

Vint Cerf, considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, predicts that “by 2010 more than 50 percent of books worldwide will be read on digital devices rather than in print form” and “by 2010 more than 50 percent of books sold worldwide will be printed on demand at the point of sale in the form of library-quality paperbacks.” No one has bet against him.

Paul Allen predicts insurance will be one of the next industries to be disintermediated. Ryan Money predicts real estate. I guess they could place a long bet on it.