In a surprising twist, I just received a second $100k sponsorship for Ladybird | Hacker News Reader

In a surprising twist, I just received a second $100k sponsorship for Ladybird

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70 pointssamwillis31 comments

Ongoing discussion (from the first $100k),

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377805

This is just cool. Thank you kind anon.

An even kinder anon would have sent them some sort of invoice or confirmation of the donation, so that the developer would have a way to correctly report their income. Of course that would make anon not anon any more.

why is parent comment downvoted? in europe an anonymous payment of that amount is not even possible, i believe at least on payments over 10000€ (maybe even lower) you must show where it comes from.

i know the US are very keen on tracing payments to track criminal activity, so i very much doubt that anonymous payments that high will go through without someone taking a close look.

it is quite possible that an anonymous payment that high may not be legally accepted at all.

I didn't downvote, but it's probably because of the lack of understanding and/or fear-mongering around privacy/anonymity.

Yes, he'll have to report the donation and pay his taxes. Yes, someone may "take a close look". No, there is no chance he'll be legally prevented from accepting the donation, unless he lives in an authoritarian country like China/North Korea where owning crypto at all is illegal.

Crypto has been used for anonymous donations as long as it's existed and afaik nobody has ever faced any legal problems from accepting an anonymous donation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund

If you live in Austria, the very least the Finanzamt will demand is that you pay 16.7% of the amount as VAT, since you can't prove that the payment is VAT exempt. If you don't declare it correctly from the beginning (eg. because you assume it is a payment from a non-EU country that would be tax exempt) you will face a fine on top of it.

If you get caught up in criminal investigations, eg. because you previously worked for a company that was caught paying people under the table, you will have no way to prove that the donation was legal.

I wouldn't worry about anonymous donations of a few hundred Euros, but a 100k anonymous donation will definitely invite a close look from authorities. In my experience tax audits are stressful enough even if you did everything correctly and have documentation for all payments.

So either money laundry or money from other people who lost those 100k in their crypto adventures.

I would not take anonymous crypto.

Please explain.

There have plenty of people loosing a lot of money in crypto due to them believing 'get rich fast', etc.

The people who got rich of crypto are not rich because value was created out of thin air but because enough VC or cryptobros pushed tons of ads in their faces to get more money from normal people.

If someone now randomly donates 100k in crypto it was probably money from normal other people.

Or and that's a second option: it's money laundry.

You are as ignorant on what money laundering is as people that think coding/hacking in movies is actually just scrolling terminal text going at 1000 words per minute.

I like to call these "coin-operated comments". Someone sees an input phrase "cryptocurrency", a neuron fires, and they respond with an output phrase "money laundering". The pattern recognition is good enough to be able to emit a relevant predetermined opinion from ROM, but there's no higher-level ability to adapt to the flow of conversation or absorb any new information.

> Or and that's a second option: it's money laundry.

That part is bullshit unless you accuse the author of being a part of it. Money laundering is about getting part of your dirty money in some form of clean income. Here it would only work if the person receiving the money would be in on the scheme and spend it accordingly. That would be a crime, btw.

For a different respective: some donors might be thieves or worse. Many and probably most aren't. I would gladly accept an anonymous donation. What to do if i learn it's ill gotten is a different discussion. I don't understand your money laundry hypothesis.

Look. You just created an account just to accuse a FOSS project be a fraud? Really?

Nope. I created an account to comment on crypto.

I spend too much time on hn and discussions. Not much to interpret into my fresh account.it would be great to have a feature were hn shows me less content.

Anyway I still stand by my point: either it's money laundry or it is money from someone who got rich through crypto which is genuine just the money from others.

I'm lost on why you don't try to counterpoint instead of being offended.

I would not take anonymous crypto for ethical reasons

Counterpointing or arguing against a baseless claim gives some legitimacy to said claim.

All money is just money from someone else, that's nothing specific to cryptocurrencies.

“I would not take anonymous crypto for ethical reasons”

Lmao. You’re sitting here telling us that if you got a a real, anonymous donation of $100k, you would not accept it because of a moral objection to the type of currency? Of all the fake high horses…

Yes.

Believe it or not, not my problem.

I have ethical standards I will not cross especially of money.

I am all for ethics and principles, but by your logic using knifes is unethical (even for cutting bread), because others have been hurt or killed with knifes

Would you take anonymous cash?

Money laundering isn’t what you think it is.

The whole point of money laundering is to keep the money, not give it away.

If I steal $500 million dollars in crypto, maybe one of the ways I'd launder it would end with donations to many things, some small number of which actually end up being myself.

which doesn’t apply here unless you are accusing the author of having illegally earned crypto and donating to himself to launder money.

this guy doesn’t have trouble earning 100k it’s a ridiculous accusation

Afaik, he isn't in any way liable for where the cryptocurrency comes from or under what circumstances it was gained. KYC regulations and anti-money laundering provisions only apply to exchanges. At most he's legally obligated to report the transaction because it's a taxable asset.

Ethically he is.

I didn't mention laws.

There's just no point in invoking ethics in something like this when the ethical concerns affect every commonly used currency.

I can make the same point for every currency.

But crypto is definitely special

The problem with an anonymous crypto donation is that it is hard to convince the tax authorities that this is what is was.

I've had some trouble with foreign income during an audit from my tax authorities. It took me a while to find the correct documents that the tax authorities accepted as proof for where the money came from. And that was for 100% legal income.

If you get an anonymous donation in crypto, you have zero proof where that money came from. The tax authorities will have no reason to believe it was an actual donation, and chances are high you'll end up having to pay random taxes and a fine.

That's ok I will take it :)

for this to be money laundering, the recipient would need to be in on it.

so are you accusing the ladybird developer of money laundering or are you not sure what money laundering is?

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