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Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

Sergey's net worth is in large part held as stock (in Google). His liquid is probably <$1B.

That probably doesn't matter that much. I don't see why he can't just donate his GOOG shares instead of cash.

Or take out a loan against them. Or put them up as collateral for a loan taken by Wikipedia. Assets are assets. If they're really worth something they're never really "tied down" completely.

donating cash has tax benefits

donating stock directly also has its own problems.

Gates and Buffet both donated stock to the Gates Foundation, which manages it with a separate arm.

Stocks that are publicly traded on exchanges are considered to be liquid too (because he can sell them at any given date).

Not that it matters, at all. It's a gift, an endorsement.

Right. And my liquid fraction of that $2M number is far less still. My "assets" are held up in my employment and dolled out every two weeks in a paycheck. So by that analysis he should be donating even more, no?

No. As an officer of a public company, he sells his shares on timetable as required by insider trading regulation.

You can cash out your entire net worth within a month to year max. Sergey, practically, can never realise his entire net worth, or anything close to it.

Actually if I'm reading his post correctly, his $2 million net worth is imaginary, and is based on an estimate of how much money it would take in order to passively generate the $60K per annum-ish which he currently works for. Kindof an odd way of putting things.

This is a digression, but you are completely misunderstanding my point. I can't "cash out" my "$2M" because I don't have it. I have a job that provides the income I'd get from about $2M in conservatively invested assets. That is much less liquid than Brin's shares (he can borrow against them, for example, where I've already tapped that avenue with my mortgage).

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