these 'bit' assets are (though I guess not intentionally) pretty much a scam.

I wouldn't agree they're a scam. You could have made the same mistake on multiple blockchains and CEX on an illiquid market trading pair.

Further there are multiple 'smartcoins' issued by different groups, ie bitassets are committee ran and bitBTC ran into issues like 5 years ago , where as HONEST.USD for example is run by a community org.

You could avoid these smartcoins entirely if you're only interested in the topic of this article - credit offer mechanisms, with minimal risk.

I have updated the blog post lender image to not reference bitUSD, but rather XBTSX.USD for BTS, apologies for bringing up bitAssets whilst some are in a state of settlement.