I somehow got confused on the offeringletter and thought it was much more abbreviated than it was. Your comment straightened me out on that. In the context of the full letter, many of my concerns are not as valid – it is a proper full disclosure. Thanks!
Amount of compensation to be paid to the intermediary, … It is between 7% and 13%.
Any other financial interest in the issuer held by the intermediary, or any arrangement for the intermediary to acquire such an interest: … 3%.
I think my guess of 10% is the most likely. The +/-3% range (7%-13% is 10%+/-3%) is possibly due to some ambiguity over what (2) means (… or it’s related to the listed perqs). It’s either a grant of 3% of the shares to StartEngine (… and, so, 13% …) or it’s a requirement that StartEngine (and/or its “Owners”) acquire 3% of the shares (… and, so, a net of 7% cashflow).
So, hypothetically, if I get some disposable income is it better for me to buy Purism products and hide them under my bed in case something bad happens to this company and I need replacement parts – or is it better to invest in these sort of “shares” of stuff?
I’m not asking for licensed investment advice, just opinion about which pathway is more likely to lead to a better outcome for free software.
That’s a fairly difficult hypothetical but if it were me, my first question would be: consider what country you are in. For example, StartEngine says
we are not currently accepting investments from UK or Canadian investors
So if you are in one of those countries, the hypothetical is not in fact difficult. (There may be other countries where the law in your country prevents you from investing.)
However in light of what @JCS has subtly requested above , I’m going to leave this topic. Anyone who is genuinely considering investing should follow the link in the OP and post their question(s), if any, there.
Now just over 50% of sales are b2c, but the model has been proving proper by forming a strong foundation with b2c (sell thousands of devices to thousands of customers), expanding b2b (sell thousands of devices to a few customers), and b2g (sell many thousands of devices to a select few customers). We have long believed that b2b will be greater than b2c sales and that b2g will be even greater than b2b sales, and our trend of the past few years is living up to that belief. - Todd, FAQ
Maybe but the reality is that in some countries it is a legal requirement for the true identity of all shareholders to be public (and that hasn’t changed). That isn’t really compatible with the internet era, and certainly isn’t compatible with using a VPN to pay by cryptocurrency and giving a fake id (not that I am suggesting that you personally intended to do that).
Revealing true identity does not necessitate revealing true location, IP address, and ISP. Banking and stock trading can be done using a VPN in the USA. Blocking VPN users is unnecessary.
I was using location to mean literal location on the planet, not physical address where one lives. Location is obtained from IP address and is not needed for identification purposes when doing online banking and stock trading. For instance, physically (or digitally by VPN) travelling to another state within the USA does not bar someone from accessing these services.
It is - in the event that the law has been broken. Assuming you are not using a VPN (or any other obscuring technology), your IP address at the time you accepted the offer of shares + the time at which that occurred … identifies you (as always, depending on the country in question and the laws that provide for that).
In the context of this topic, yes, they probably don’t care about where you were physically at the time that you carried out the transaction. (In the context of other situations where the law has been broken, your physical location at the time would be highly relevant.)
In no way am I suggesting that if you use a VPN then you are a criminal. I am just explaining why (for a given jurisdiction where the laws in that jurisdiction require a person to be identified, and located at least as far as “country” goes) the service provider cares to disable the use of a VPN.
In essence, Canada (for example) is saying “under Canadian law you must not offer shares to people in Canada” and StartEngine is saying “we will make the following reasonable efforts to implement that: we will geoblock Canadian IP addresses and we will block all known VPNs so that a person cannot trivially bypass our geoblock” and then Canada is saying “ok, well, if you do that then we will not sue your ass if you occasionally fail and some Canadians slip through the cracks”.
If you have a problem with that (and I completely understand that anyone would) then you don’t have a problem with the service provider (in this case StartEngine). You have a problem with the laws that apply so as to require identification and to restrict location. (It is a much bigger discussion as to whether those laws are reasonable and proportionate, particularly in the internet era.)
I’m sure they don’t know about every VPN provider on the planet. So probably if you choose the ‘right’ VPN provider, you can use a VPN but still accept the offer of shares. Of if you happen to be in Canada then you can travel across the border in order to conduct the transaction.
Nothing in the previous paragraph is intended to encourage you to break the law. Just pointing out that no system is foolproof.
No, your IP address is used to track your activities. When doing online banking/investing, your username, password, and 2FA is used to validate you based on the information already collected in order to legally identify you (full legal name, ID, social security number, and home address). Your IP address is absolutely not used as a form of identification or validation of your identity; it is used for tracking purposes. There is a major difference between identifying a person (name, ID, social security number, etc.) and identifying a person’s current location (physical and/or digital).
I’m not here to argue about the merits of tracking; I was merely correcting something you had said. Your IP address might be required for any number of things, but your identity is not one of them when doing online banking/investing.
Thanks for the discussion and clarifications here. There is one reason I am not going to invest, but that is not due to purism: with such an investment, I - as a EU citizen - would fall under the global reach of the US tax system. Whenever I open a bank account in Germany you have a checkbox ‘do you have any direct business dealings in the US and are liable to IRS rules’. And if you check that box you can pretty much expect to be declined as a regular customer. Banks are way too scared of multibillion law suits by the US authorities and rather loose the peanuts they can earn with me.
So, I’ ll continue to donate or buy stuff from purism rather than invest in them.
Similar here. Everyone gets asked whether they come under the FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and if you fail to deny that you do then all your tax and income data will get shipped over to the US government. Thanks to both governments. Not.
, I’m going to leave this topic. Anyone who is genuinely considering investing should follow the link in the OP and post their question(s), if any, there.
