[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.

[rebuilder]

Stop talking about your illegal venture when all doing so gets you is increased risk of capture.