Prosper's SEC Registration Declared Effective

Prosper's SEC registration statement also covers the first Internet auction-based trading platform (sometimes referred to in financial circles as a "secondary market"), which makes it possible for Prosper lender members to sell their Prosper Notes to other individual and institutional investors. The note trading service is provided by Foliofn Investments, Inc., through their Folio Investing Note Trader platform.

Prosper first introduced the concept of people-to-people lending in the U.S. when it launched in 2006. The goal was to create a platform where people could invest in each other in a way that was socially and financially rewarding. The concept quickly caught on. From the time Prosper launched up until the time it entered an SEC registration quiet period in October 2008, Prosper had grown to more than 800,000 members and facilitated approximately $180 million in personal loans, making Prosper the largest peer-to-peer loans marketplace in the world.

"With the financial system in crisis, P2P lending — Americans investing in fellow Americans and small businesses — is needed now more than ever," said Chris Larsen, CEO and co-founder of Prosper. "It has been extremely frustrating to be on the sidelines in the teeth of a credit crunch. Nevertheless, we believe that completion of the SEC registration process for our auction-based model — a model that we believe is an extraordinarily powerful tool for fair price discovery for everyone involved in the transaction — is a major watershed for the industry."