berberous

The strike prices of options are set based on a 409A valuation.

These are "cashless" loans, which are recourse for tax purposes (so that the IRS respects this as a true purchase of shares, in order to start people's LTCG and QSBS clocks). The terms were likely very favorable, i.e. set with an interest rate equivalent to the AFR. This is not a situation in which the company is trying to make money as a lender.

This is no riskier than deciding whether or not to exercise your options, which typically employees have to decide within 3 months of leaving a startup.

The risk is not in the terms of the loan, but in whether the employee wants to exercise and lay out the cash (or the promise to pay the cash); in each case, it's an investment decision to decide whether it's worth it given that the stock is risky and could eventually be worth zero.

Note that all these issues are driven by tax rules, and generally not the startups. Startups are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Every type of equity has pros/cons. If it's an immaterial amount of money, the employee should be a big boy and just decide whether or not to risk the cash. If it's a material amount of money, the employee should really be speaking to their own advisors, which if they have a material amount of equity, they should be able to afford to do.

It was an option, not a requirement. There are pros/cons to doing it, but it was ultimately the employee’s decision. I’m sure the risks were well disclosed. The issue is >50% of employees don’t understand any of it, no matter how well explained and disclosed.

People shit on the algorithmic feed, but I love it. I’m too busy to wade through bad/boring tweets, and don’t want to spend all day scrolling. I can check it once or day or less and the algorithmic sorting surfaces the best content right at the top.

That said, I don’t really need a smarter algorithm than “show my tweets with a lot of favorites”.

Just like a prefer to have Reddit sort by best vs new.

Who said I trust them? Do you really not believe they will provide an accounting? Want to bet?

These idiots lost people billions of dollars. I think they have a target on their back from pissed off investors, regulators, etc. There is no way they can avoid providing an accounting, and with BTC being onchain, it would be very hard to try to lie about what the funds were used for. But I never even said I trust their accounting, just that they will provide one.

I imagine they may have made many transactions with the BTC during the emergency, and they are still dealing with the fallout. My only point was that pointing to two days of silence is a bit ridiculous. Things take time, and they have competing priorities. Give them a few days.

Happy to bet any of the downvoters that disagree...

It's been 2-3 days since the entire thing blew up. Nobody said "it can't be accounted for", they said it's not yet accounted for. They will for sure account for every single BTC, but they have been, you know, busy with trying to deal with an emergency.

See also Do Kwon saying the same thing: https://twitter.com/stablekwon/status/1525238422264172544?s=...

Grant Thornton is an accounting firm, not a law firm. And signing that way is customary for a legal or accounting opinion.

Do you think 50 years is all that long in the historical context?

America showed that you could have hundreds of years of stable democracy until a simple combination of cable news, Twitter and a narcissistic president almost led to a coup.

The Roman republic was stable for hundreds of years until it collapsed.

The Turkish lira has lost more than 97 per cent of its value against the US dollar since January 2021.

I agree with you that the 1950-2010 world order and U.S. monetary system was better than Bitcoin. Where we disagree I think, is with our confidence in the stability of human institutions and the likelihood that the world necessarily remains stable in that world order for the next 1,000.

Your privilege is showing.

Many economies have collapsed or people have been severely harmed from runaway inflation. Even now in the US, the wealthy aren’t terribly affected by inflation, especially with home and stock prices rising more than enough to offset them, while the poor are increasingly struggling with currently no end in sight.

Perhaps a Bitcoin w/ 2% inflation would have been better than a deflationary one, but I still question whether the average person in the average country is better off with the risk that their government mismanages target inflation than with an algorithmic deflationary Bitcoin.

I also question whether Bitcoin being deflationary is really a bad thing when it’s also a store of wealth and not the only means of exchange in a country.

I generally agree, but think there is a pretty easy middle ground here that is better. For example, to default that the app is unavailable but have a toggle in the App Store that shows such dead apps. That reduces clutter and allows newer apps to shine, but if a user is specifically looking for some old app that is important and not otherwise available for some reason, they can still get it.

If the VCs put in more cash for this, it’s just going to dilute the existing stockholders (including the employees). The cash is not immaterial. And as another response said, the cash to cover the exercise is taxable income so this idea is really not tax efficient.

This is almost always a repurchase at original cost (not fair market value). The company does not owe taxes on that.

Taylor could have published an article about the alleged harm the account is doing.

Taylor perhaps could have even doxxed the account if the writer was in fact a public figure: that would be newsworthy.

Taylor doxxing the identity of what turns out to be a completely unknown private citizen is not newsworthy; it adds nothing of value to the story, other than allowing this person to be harassed and intimidated for her views and actions.

Her decrying her own harassment, while enabling the harassment of others, is pure hypocrisy.

This is ignoring that 3 and 4 are still improvements.

This argument is similar to me saying there is no point to encrypted communications because the government can hack it, plant back doors, throw you in jail, etc. That is all true, but making the government’s job harder, even if not theoretically impossible for a nation state, is still something that is worthwhile.

This is transparent BS even to those who take cryptocurrency seriously like me. Judging the entire space by the worst of it is stupid IMO. It’s like saying nobody should take any startups seriously because of Theranos or Juicero.

Sure, but that would be illegal and won’t happen. The SEC has filing requirements and the poison pill, if triggered, probably requires certain representations to be made (e.g. the buyer of the newly minted shares does not hold more than X% when aggregated with anyone they are acting in concert with).

Do you really think these poison pills are not thought through?

Yes, they are newly minted shares.

The poison pill applies to any person, entity or group. If Elon has other shell companies, or even just people acting in concert with him, they are all excluded from the right to buy. They all get diluted.

To be fair, Jack finally stepped down in November and Parag replaced him as CEO. So there is new management that hasn’t really had time to shine or fail yet.

I’m too lazy to Google if this is true, but I recall studies linking drinking hot beverages (tea, coffee) to esophageal cancer, presumably from heat damage.

What "government financial controls" are you referring to?

Not everything is black and white. While the government can enact laws, and enforce those with courts and guns, on a practical level it is easier, for example, to flee a hostile country with Bitcoin than with a checking account held at a local bank.

This is such a nonsensical argument. Crypto is a huge space with myriad benefits, which are not negated by having some elements regulated.

For example, perhaps you are in favor of crypto because it is (i) harder for a state to seize or (ii) impossible for a single state to inflate. Those are in part possible because of the distributed decentralized nature of cryptocurrency. Being in favor of those two things does not mean you cannot also be in favor of regulating people that manipulate crypto market by wash trading, in favor of arresting thieves and hackers, in favor of banning insider trading, etc. You can have a system with trustless elements and that still relies on the laws and regulations to enforce certain aspects.

This is a strawman. It also paints “crypto fans”, as some monolithic group that all think the same way.

I am a crypto fan and do not “want deregulated finance”. It is not “exactly what crypto is all about”. I think most in the space would actually like to see more sensible regulation.

Regarding her hourly rate, here is the public document, which clearly states she is charging $5k per hour: https://twitter.com/cheesemonkeysf/status/150892349118089626...

Now perhaps that is a misleadingly drafted document, or the full agreement provided a variety of free services as well, but on its face, it seems reasonable to assume she is charging $5k per hour since that is how she is phrasing it in contracts she is signing.

The point of attorney client privilege is to encourage the client to get the advice of counsel, who can hopefully guide the client to staying within the law.

That policy goal applies equally well for both individuals and corporations.

It is not some handout to corporations.

Did you read the linked government brief?

I don’t trust the brief to not be misleading, but reading it at face value is pretty damning.

Swallowing a battery can cause devastating internal injuries including death. I would try to find a way to strongly discourage the behavior and not encourage it for that reason.

I have no experience with them but people biting their nails is a common enough problem that I know there are bitter tasting products out there designed to be applied to your nails to stop the behavior, so consider googling for those.

I generally agree with you for most stories and facts about the war, but this one is just obvious.

The ruble has declined and the Russian stock market has been closed all week. Russia has been sanctioned. Russia is sending people to fight in a war. There are rumors (whether true or not) that Russia is planning to close borders, impose martial law, etc. Those are all verifiable facts.

In the face of the above, of course people are considering leaving Russia. That is just smart and human nature.

Wouldn’t the targets mostly be military (sites housing nukes or otherwise militarily important) and perhaps a few cities to largely neutralize them from doing anything other than kick their wounds (NY, DC, LA)? I don’t see why they should want to destroy more minor cities as well (Baltimore, Miami, Charleston, etc) for no reason; seems like it doesn’t meaningful add protection when doing a first strike

When is that?

I’ve never heard of them and everyone in this thread now has. I think they succeeded with the marketing stunt. If they led with the facts it wouldn’t have been as viral as it leverages people’s extreme interest in this political issue.