[the_stc]

Our ICO is really an IPO. We are selling shares in our company (unregulated security). We have a real business model, good fundamentals. And before the full ICO, we will have a working service.

Cryptocurrency allows us to avoid capital and other controls to fund a venture which would be impossible to fund otherwise.

But most ICOs are blatant scams trying to justify their useless tokens, Kodak included.

[lightbyte]

So you're trying to get around regulations that you would need to follow if you wanted to do an IPO?

[the_stc]

More than that, our business is not legal in the US which is one of our primary markets.

[yodon]

So you’re adding financial crimes to the set of things you’re doing to found your company? Selling securities is a HUGE deal with tons of complex and subtle laws governing it. This isn’t because “governments are stupid” it’s because fraud in the sale of securities is so easy and such a problem. In the US it’s actually the state attorneys general and state regulators who are the most focused on this sort of thing, though the federal government also gets involved. Your jurisdiction maybe be different but this stuff carries across borders. Please, do yourself an incredibly important favor. Run, do not walk, to the nearest large law firm and tell them you’re interested in their services. Then listen to them. It will be expensive but cheaper than being prosecuted for securities fraud, which will happen because it’s a much easier way for the government to shut your company down than going through the front door. Oh, and when the word fraud is tacked onto a corporate indictment, as a good rule of thumb it means the corporate veil is peirced and they can go after your personal assets as well, not just the company’s assets. What you’re doing is a really bad idea unless you have a top law firm behind you telling you it’s ok (and even then you need to be following their instructions to the letter).

P.s. if you get the securities regulatory stuff wrong, even if the governments don’t go after you your investors have almost perfect leverage to force you out of business at any time they wish, turning that 5% investor into a 51% controlling interest, simply because you screwed up your securities offering.

[the_stc]

We have consulted with lawyers. None of them are going to give the go-ahead on this project.

Quote from one of them: There is no such things as extrajurisdictional, unless you're on the moon. My reply: If our opsec is good, we may as well be. Tor's latency even makes it feel like being in space.

If our opsec fails and I am unmasked, I will be unhappy at being caught. Successors will recover the system from backup keys and continue on. Small comfort.

[yodon]

You will look back on the decision to do this with regret. I understand you can’t see that now. I’m genuinely sorry for you.

P.s. if you did talk to lawyers about this, your “opsec” is probably already blown or partially blown. Attorney-Client privileges only click in if you’re their client, which you aren’t. They will remember you and connect the dots if and when the time comes for anyone to care who you are.

[the_stc]

It certainly is a possibility. I am acutely aware of it every day. It is incredibly high stress. That is why our core team desires to hire people to run the business day-to-day, so we minimize our exposure online and hence reduce possibilities of making opsec mistakes.

Communicating with a lawyer anonymously is not much more difficult than communicating with someone on HN anonymously.

Here is an article discussing some of our opsec, server-oriented: https://medium.com/@PinkDate/pink-app-trading-latency-for-an...

At least I am doing something ethical, to benefit people. This is more than I can say about working on adtech and privacy-invasive data software.

[lurr]

Plus no one really owns anything.

[the_stc]

>really

We issue dividends which is more than you can say about SNAP.

[UncleMeat]

Yes I sure hope that before you sell shares of your company you have some product. Why is this even impressive?

Do I get to vote? Do I get dividends? I'm personally a big fan of securities regulation. Are you going to have open financials and reporting? Why is this better?

[the_stc]

I am pointing out that not all ICOs are pure-product-free-plays.

Voting, we are uncertain how that would work but very much open to it. Dividends, yes, that is the entire point of us selling equity. This is considerably better than what you get from some publicly traded companies these days!

Open financials: We will have a certificate-transparency-style audit-log of our revenue and we will release limited financials and can discuss concerns if the revenue numbers and profits are too far apart.

This is better because before anonymity tech and cryptocurrencies...It was very difficult to invest in or even run a global escorting platform. This is due to the laws in many countries that we can now work-around. And investors can participate while maintaining their complete privacy. This is difficult with traditional government-regulated equities.