Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue

"This is a parody website. Any resemblance to real companies wash-trading their revenue is purely coincidental and also definitely happening."

Obligatory Michael Lewis quote, from Boomerang (2011):

> Yet another hedge fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: you have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that each is worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets.

That's just a variant of this old one:

Two economists are walking through a cow pasture.

The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.

They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.

Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."

"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"

I find this amusing: I'm from Poland, where after the VAT tax was introduced in the 1990s, there were famous "VAT carousel" crimes, with people ending up in prison. The basic idea was similar, except you also collected VAT refunds from the state.

If you search for "vat carousel" today, it seems this is still a thing.

The FAQ is amazing....pre-legal haha

This is why substance over form is a thing in revenue accounting. Unless you're an American AI company ofc.