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No, not at all. During my asset freeze, I considered trying to take action against my bank to force something to actually happen and facts to come to light. But

No, not at all. During my asset freeze, I considered trying to take action against my bank to force something to actually happen and facts to come to light. But I also had access to no money, and and my time was better spent working some cash jobs so I didn't have to lean so much on my friends. And then once my assets were unfrozen, I don't think I really have much grounds for recourse..

sillysaurusx 5y ago
I’m sorry but what? Was this in the US? Because the intro was “oppressive regime,” and then you gave an example of an oppressive regime, and now I’m realizing you might very well be in the US. I’m just shocked; never considered this could happen. Was this related to your employer, and… Well, I should just ask rather than guess :) thank you for sharing, and I’m really sorry that happened. One of the best decisions I’ve made recently is to set up a company for myself. More specifically, I set up a non profit “for the world” (mostly as an intellectual exercise of “how hard would it be to mimic what openai originally set out to do? Turns out, it’s not hard!) which then put me in a position where I knew exactly how to set up an LLC for myself for consulting, and how to set up a bank account (use https://www.mercury.com https://www.mercury.com — don’t use anything else). The takeaway is that, if you’re in the US, you can have protection from exactly this sort of thing, for roughly zero cost — in Missouri the filing fee for an LLC was a whopping $50. That’s how much it cost me to set everything up, start to finish. I now have a business banking account, quickbooks takes care of the taxes (admittedly $24/mo isn’t “totally free” but it’s also “pretty cheap” relatively speaking) — which means that yes, someone could freeze my LLC (hello IRS) or freeze my personal account (hello US Bank, you suck) but it’s highly unlikely both will ever be frozen simultaneously, unless both the business and my personal accounts are under scrutiny simultaneously. The cure for that is very simple, as long as you’re rigorous: income comes in to your Mercury account; it flows out into your personal account, by paying yourself a salary. Never use the Mercury account for anything else. Congratulations, your LLC is almost impervious from problems. (My famous last words; the fact is, I have no idea what I’m talking about, and this is what I’m expecting to be true as t approaches infinity). So yes. Bitcoin: good solution. LLC: also good solution. Wish I’d taken advantage of it sooner. Unsure about outside of the US though, sadly. Though I’ve often toyed with the idea of making a company specializing in setting up one of those offshore bank tax havens, and offering a product like Stripe whose sole purpose is to automate that. :) Then everybody gets the loophole, rather than a rich few. Anyway, thanks again for sharing that very unexpected story; I hope it never happens to you again!
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  If you want to protect your money, wouldn't it be easier to open an account in another country and transfer the money there? In Europe we can do it very simple with Revolut or Monese. When you have money in the Revolut account you can spend them in any country and it would be very difficult for some entity to block your funds.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    That's a good point! I don't know anything about that. I assumed it was difficult for a US resident to open a long term bank account in Europe without having to reside in Europe. But that assumption is probably wrong. Thanks for the hint about Revolut and Monese. Now I'm curious what their requirements are...
- reidjs 5y ago
  I’ve thought of doing this, but how would it work if you have a normal day job? Can you have your job pay you through the LLC?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    That’s sadly the catch. I’m sorry — I completely forgot to mention that this works for me because I’m consulting, so businesses pay my LLC rather than me. However, I will say that one business wanted to hire me full time, and I refused and asked for a higher consulting rate, which they agreed to. So it’s not impossible for your next job to end up similarly. But then you don’t get benefits (my wife’s health insurance covers us both), sick days, and you probably have to log hours (to my surprise). So even if it’s more lucrative for me right now, there are definite reasons this path isn’t suitable for everyone. Definitely consider it if you can swing it though. And also, you can simply invoice yourself for services rendered from your LLC, which effectively transfers money from your personal account to the LLC. I’ve had to do this to bootstrap funds into the account (since your balance starts with $0, which is useless). The problem is tax. There are two issues. One is that an LLC is a pass-through entity. That means all profits are expected to pass through immediately to your personal account, or used immediately on business expenses. If you try to maintain a $20k balance for a year, for example, you’ll discover that this balance counts against your deductions for that tax year (effectively a negative $20k deduction). Or at least that’s my understanding so far. Therefore, as with most things, you should ask an accountant for advice. But that’s an unsatisfying answer. My answer was going to be, therefore, you can create a C Corp instead of an LLC, and transfer some of your personal funds into that (by invoicing yourself). The problem (argh, they never end) is that the income will be taxed for the Corp, and then taxed again when you pay from the Corp back to yourself. This is precisely the “double taxation” problem that LLCs were designed to solve! The reason it still might make sense is because of all the incredible benefits of setting up your own company. For example, merely opening a Mercury account at all means you can redeem $5k of aws credits. $5k! I’ve done this! To my surprise, it happened! And that’s just one of like 80 Mercury perks. There are so many, and it’s been so much fun window shopping through them all. It’s how I wound up using quickbooks for example. Plus you’ll have an account that people can wire money to. Mercury has a nice little PDF with all your wire transfer details. It feels like driving a Tesla, whereas US Bank was like not having a car at all. (It was truly one of the worst business banking experiences imaginable. They even managed to lose an incoming $10k wire transfer. Nonsense like that simply doesn’t happen with Mercury.) So there’s a brain dump of pretty much everything I’ve learned over two months of studying this. The takeaway is that if I had a day job, I would set up a C Corp and transfer a few grand to it by invoicing myself. (No, I wouldn’t use stripe atlas. That’s $500. You can do it yourself for $50, and it’s been surprisingly painless. Both Missouri filing and the IRS EIN were entirely online, so you don’t even have to mail anything.) Just, uh… perhaps consider it a side hobby. This kind of nerdiness is uniquely fun to me. I imagine that it’s incredibly un-fun for most people. Treating it as a hobby helps overcome that pain, and the risk turns out to be minimal. I was surprised by that.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I’m sorry but what? Was this in the US? Because the intro was “oppressive regime,” and then you gave an example of an oppressive regime, and now I’m realizing you might very well be in the US. I’m just shocked; never considered this could happen. Was this related to your employer, and… Well, I should just ask rather than guess :) thank you for sharing, and I’m really sorry that happened. One of the best decisions I’ve made recently is to set up a company for myself. More specifically, I set up a non profit “for the world” (mostly as an intellectual exercise of “how hard would it be to mimic what openai originally set out to do? Turns out, it’s not hard!) which then put me in a position where I knew exactly how to set up an LLC for myself for consulting, and how to set up a bank account (use https://www.mercury.com https://www.mercury.com — don’t use anything else). The takeaway is that, if you’re in the US, you can have protection from exactly this sort of thing, for roughly zero cost — in Missouri the filing fee for an LLC was a whopping $50. That’s how much it cost me to set everything up, start to finish. I now have a business banking account, quickbooks takes care of the taxes (admittedly $24/mo isn’t “totally free” but it’s also “pretty cheap” relatively speaking) — which means that yes, someone could freeze my LLC (hello IRS) or freeze my personal account (hello US Bank, you suck) but it’s highly unlikely both will ever be frozen simultaneously, unless both the business and my personal accounts are under scrutiny simultaneously. The cure for that is very simple, as long as you’re rigorous: income comes in to your Mercury account; it flows out into your personal account, by paying yourself a salary. Never use the Mercury account for anything else. Congratulations, your LLC is almost impervious from problems. (My famous last words; the fact is, I have no idea what I’m talking about, and this is what I’m expecting to be true as t approaches infinity). So yes. Bitcoin: good solution. LLC: also good solution. Wish I’d taken advantage of it sooner. Unsure about outside of the US though, sadly. Though I’ve often toyed with the idea of making a company specializing in setting up one of those offshore bank tax havens, and offering a product like Stripe whose sole purpose is to automate that. :) Then everybody gets the loophole, rather than a rich few. Anyway, thanks again for sharing that very unexpected story; I hope it never happens to you again!

DeathArrow 5y ago
If you want to protect your money, wouldn't it be easier to open an account in another country and transfer the money there? In Europe we can do it very simple with Revolut or Monese. When you have money in the Revolut account you can spend them in any country and it would be very difficult for some entity to block your funds.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  That's a good point! I don't know anything about that. I assumed it was difficult for a US resident to open a long term bank account in Europe without having to reside in Europe. But that assumption is probably wrong. Thanks for the hint about Revolut and Monese. Now I'm curious what their requirements are...
reidjs 5y ago
I’ve thought of doing this, but how would it work if you have a normal day job? Can you have your job pay you through the LLC?
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  That’s sadly the catch. I’m sorry — I completely forgot to mention that this works for me because I’m consulting, so businesses pay my LLC rather than me. However, I will say that one business wanted to hire me full time, and I refused and asked for a higher consulting rate, which they agreed to. So it’s not impossible for your next job to end up similarly. But then you don’t get benefits (my wife’s health insurance covers us both), sick days, and you probably have to log hours (to my surprise). So even if it’s more lucrative for me right now, there are definite reasons this path isn’t suitable for everyone. Definitely consider it if you can swing it though. And also, you can simply invoice yourself for services rendered from your LLC, which effectively transfers money from your personal account to the LLC. I’ve had to do this to bootstrap funds into the account (since your balance starts with $0, which is useless). The problem is tax. There are two issues. One is that an LLC is a pass-through entity. That means all profits are expected to pass through immediately to your personal account, or used immediately on business expenses. If you try to maintain a $20k balance for a year, for example, you’ll discover that this balance counts against your deductions for that tax year (effectively a negative $20k deduction). Or at least that’s my understanding so far. Therefore, as with most things, you should ask an accountant for advice. But that’s an unsatisfying answer. My answer was going to be, therefore, you can create a C Corp instead of an LLC, and transfer some of your personal funds into that (by invoicing yourself). The problem (argh, they never end) is that the income will be taxed for the Corp, and then taxed again when you pay from the Corp back to yourself. This is precisely the “double taxation” problem that LLCs were designed to solve! The reason it still might make sense is because of all the incredible benefits of setting up your own company. For example, merely opening a Mercury account at all means you can redeem $5k of aws credits. $5k! I’ve done this! To my surprise, it happened! And that’s just one of like 80 Mercury perks. There are so many, and it’s been so much fun window shopping through them all. It’s how I wound up using quickbooks for example. Plus you’ll have an account that people can wire money to. Mercury has a nice little PDF with all your wire transfer details. It feels like driving a Tesla, whereas US Bank was like not having a car at all. (It was truly one of the worst business banking experiences imaginable. They even managed to lose an incoming $10k wire transfer. Nonsense like that simply doesn’t happen with Mercury.) So there’s a brain dump of pretty much everything I’ve learned over two months of studying this. The takeaway is that if I had a day job, I would set up a C Corp and transfer a few grand to it by invoicing myself. (No, I wouldn’t use stripe atlas. That’s $500. You can do it yourself for $50, and it’s been surprisingly painless. Both Missouri filing and the IRS EIN were entirely online, so you don’t even have to mail anything.) Just, uh… perhaps consider it a side hobby. This kind of nerdiness is uniquely fun to me. I imagine that it’s incredibly un-fun for most people. Treating it as a hobby helps overcome that pain, and the risk turns out to be minimal. I was surprised by that.