Thank god, it's satire
https://web.archive.org/web/20260515043739/https://www.revsw...
Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
41–50 of 175 posts
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#42Obligatory 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 t…
Except the GP quote actually happens.
For example, if you've ever wondered why useless art trades at such eye-watering valuations, the answer is that the high valuations are fictions that governments will accept for tax purposes, from which you can derive a variety of exciting tax consequences: https://naturalist.gallery/blogs/journal/understanding-the-f... more-or-less because they agree among themselves what the art is valuated at for their own benefit.
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#43I 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.
VAT is a joke of a tax. It's quite incredible why the government concerns itself with chasing people's accounts around. What a waste.
If something can't be monitored with minimal effort, it only serves to enrich the legal/accountancy/hr/admin priest caste.
The amount of labour wasted on moving numbers around numbers is staggering.
edit: Between the government and businesses, VAT costs 5% in admin fees to raise. In a modern world where most transactions are digital, is this a great use of resources?
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#44Services in kind is a pretty common business practice. You see this a lot at the SMB level especially outside of the US. Small businesses are cash strapped. So you find someone who needs your services and you need their services. Instead of exchanging cash, you exchange invoices and do the work. You build them, say, a $5000 website, they perform, say, $5000 of landscaping. At big boy levels this is often structured a…
the last thing you should do in this scenario is book that as revenue. Of course I would never do this, but you could keep it off the books.
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#45Services in kind is a pretty common business practice. You see this a lot at the SMB level especially outside of the US. Small businesses are cash strapped. So you find someone who needs your services and you need their services. Instead of exchanging cash, you exchange invoices and do the work. You build them, say, a $5000 website, they perform, say, $5000 of landscaping. At big boy levels this is often structured a…
This feels very adjacent to the story about the whole town in debt, and the rich guy leaves a $100 bill on the table, [and so on], in a way that I can't quite put my finger on.
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#46Anyone else getting "SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP"
Confirmed. Firefox and Chrome.
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#47SEC calls this round-tripping. ASC 606 requires commercial substance — if both parties just book offsetting transactions, auditors flag the net cash flow as zero
offsetting in what horizon? I give you 100 in q4 2026 you give me 100 in q1 2027
They're already ahead of you; you have to consistently book revenue (accrual or cash basis) which means they both go at the same time (which would offset) or that real money is being exchanged. You can't accrue the 100 you're (supposedly) giving me now and THEN accrue the 100 I'm giving you next year.
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#48Never seen that particular SSL error before!
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#49Activities like this are a good sign of a bubble close to bursting. The circular deals Nvidia and OpenAI have done are good examples of this. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-ai-circular-deals
It's a joke
Re: Trade Dollars with other startups. Book it as revenue
#50Thank god, it's satire https://web.archive.org/web/20260515043739/https://www.revsw...
"This is a parody website. Any resemblance to real companies wash-trading their revenue is purely coincidental and also definitely happening."