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Comment by johnnyApplePRNG | Hacker News Reader

So when Bitmex asks for the information of the owners of the corporation, what do I tell them? How do I prove that I am a real person who resides outside of Ontario without committing fraud? ... or actually residing outside of Ontario which would prevent the need for the shell corp in the first place?

Unfortunately I don't know anybody well enough who lives outside of any of the banned jurisdictions to trust them with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crypto currency.

If I get caught lying, Bitmex can literally liquidate all of my positions and essentially steal my money. Not sure about the others but I imagine it's the same. They're all trying to save their own skin, they don't care about me at all.

Not saying it's a bad idea, I just don't see how it would be any different than the UK corporation I already setup.

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The comments on this thread remind me of `The Big Short` when Jared Vennett's team goes to Florida to conduct diligence on the raging real estate market of the late aughts ... and Jared realizes absolutely no one is participating in the market in a prudent and reasonable way.

No one cares about the "owner" of the corporation, what matters is the registered agent. There are law firms to handle all this for you.

So when the exchange or a bank asks for the UBO for your offshore company, it wouldn't be weird to provide the information of the registered agent instead of yourself?

> So when Bitmex asks for the information of the owners of the corporation, what do I tell them?

The key here is the definition of "legal ownership of an entity", which - while most people tend to believe they're identical - is not the same as "actual control of an entity".

Sorry, what are you suggesting/saying exactly?

> Sorry, what are you suggesting/saying exactly?

I'm saying that being the legal owner of a company and having actual control of said company are really not the same thing.

There are a number of ways to achieve this, all of which are very dependent on your personal context.

But to be practical, I'll give you an example: a member of my extended family runs a construction company.

For all intents and purposes, he completely controls the company: what it does, what the money generated is used for, etc...

However, he does not own it: as seen from the govmt's perspective, his ex-spouse does.

For reasons I am not going to get into, he could not own both this construction company and other businesses he controls without running into some issues.

What he did: he divorced his wife and through the divorce, he gave her full ownership of the company.

The facts that:

    - they still live as a couple

    - they love each other

    - they trust each other with their lives

    - the wife has zero interest in sticking her nose in the company's business

None of the above appear on any book or has any legal standing.

There is a reason why so many business names in the Anglo-Saxon world have the word "trust" in them.

This is just an example, there are many other avenues.

> Sorry, what are you suggesting/saying exactly?

Another thing you might want to consider doing:

    - raise capital thru the UK company

    - use said capital to fund the bot to operate on a larger scale

    - remain one among many shareholders (preferably a minority one), most of which aren't based in the jurisdiction that's giving you a headache.

    - just be the salaried COO and single employee of said company, where all other shareholders know fully well that the day they try to wrestle actual control from you, the tech to run the bot only lives in your head ...

    - when BitMex asks for company owners, just provide them with the truth.

This is all of course predicated on your bot actually being able to earn :D

Law firms like Mossack Fonseca exist specifically to solve this kind of problem.

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