8 ms·
While this is true, remember that the Signal Foundation was started with a sizeable investment from their new interim CEO Brian Acton. > In February of 2018, A
by conroy 5y ago
While this is true, remember that the Signal Foundation was started with a sizeable investment from their new interim CEO Brian Acton.
> In February of 2018, Acton invested $50 million of his own money to start the Signal Foundation alongside Moxie Marlinspike
>
> https://signalfoundation.org/en/ https://signalfoundation.org/en/
He's worth at least a billion dollars, so one imagines that Signal will continue as long as he's involved.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoYou can't take him for granted like that. Yeah he donated a lot and yeah he has more and yeah he left $1B on the table after leaving Facebook, but he just can't do it all alone. If you're rich you get all kinds of people in your life soliciting your money, you gotta watch it like a hawk, it's easy to lose a billion dollars.
- cpach 5y agoGood point. And he might also want to donate to other charities. There are many worthy causes besides Signal. And it’s probably sound for Signal to not rely on one single wealthy donor.
- rantanplan 5y ago> it's easy to lose a billion dollars :O
- novok 5y ago20 $50 million donations to various groups and $1 billion dollars is gone. You could probably do that in 5 years and still not come out as effective.
- na85 5y agoSure but even a meagre 8% return on $950M is $76M. Buying and holding SP500 index funds in 2021 would have returned more than triple that, at 26% or so. You can give away 50 mil a year and still get tens of millions dollars richer if you're sitting on $1B. It's only "easy" to lose $1B if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing.
- sangnoir 5y agoSince when is an 8% return "meagre"?! I get it, the last year had a crazy stock price increase, but it was an outlier.
- na85 5y agoThe average SP500 return for the last 50 years is north of 10%, so I consider 8 to be meagre.
- whiddershins 5y ago4%. 4% is the number. Don’t count on anything over this.
- louthy 5y ago> it's easy to lose a billion dollars With doors that go like this or this and not like this
- sillysaurusx 5y ago> it's easy to lose a billion dollars. Can you cite some examples? If it were easy, presumably a lot of people have done it.
- grahamlee 5y ago> Can you cite some examples? Alongside the other examples in this thread, Donald Trump lost at least $1b during the first two years of his term. > If it were easy, presumably a lot of people have done it. The easiest way to lose a billion is to start with more than a billion, and there aren't really a lot of people in that position.
- kovac 5y agoMike Tyson, Evander Holy field, I'd imagine there'd be a lot of boxers.
- toyg 5y agoMany super-paid athletes famously end up broke very quickly after their careers end. Some NBA names here [0] but it's not specific to basketball - it typically correlates with coming from poverty and/or lack of financial education. [0] https://www.thesportster.com/basketball/15-nba-players-who-went-broke-after-retiring-where-are-they-now/ https://www.thesportster.com/basketball/15-nba-players-who-w...
- largbae 5y agoI wonder why they don't maintain any IP rights on their performances like actors or singers.
- karaterobot 5y agoVijay Mallya, Patricia Kluge, and Eike Batista are all entrepreneurs who lost a billion or more and are now worth nothing. Masayoshi Son lost $60 billion and only made back about $20 billion. Technically Bezos, Buffett, and Bill Gates have all lost billions many times, just due to market fluctuations, but that probably doesn't count. Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, spends $1B like nothing: $500 million yacht, $300 million dollar house (one of many), $450 million on a painting. I'm certain that many members of that family have spent $1B or more. You know what they say: a million here, a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
- tharne 5y ago> If you're rich you get all kinds of people in your life soliciting your money, you gotta watch it like a hawk, it's easy to lose a billion dollars. People forget this far too often. No matter how much money a person or an organization has, it can disappear in the blink of an eye if you view it as an unlimited money pot that you can keep going back to.
- cge 5y agoNote that this was an unusual arrangement, to say the least. My understanding, from memory of having briefly looked into this, is that Acton loaned $50m to the Foundation, rather than donating it, in what appears to be a 50-year, interest-free loan with no regular repayments. As an initial donation of that size from an individual would have probably put the Signal Foundation into private foundation status rather than public charity status, this has at least the appearance of trying to circumvent the public support requirements of public charities. It is somewhat difficult for one individual to consistently single-handedly support a charity in the US without causing the tax status of the organization to change detrimentally.
- moeadham 5y agoIf they invest the 50M, and keep the team lean, it can be long-term sustainable.
- cge 5y agoBut that---a $50m donation from an individual, then sustaining the organization off investing that donation---is exactly what, whether it makes sense or not, a public charity in the US is usually not allowed to do. That would make it a private foundation in the eyes of the IRS. With that said, if I'm interpreting their 2019 filing correctly, it appears that they are making enough in donations that they may have a legitimate claim to being able to eventually repay the loan, and they are now including imputed interest on the (interest-free) loan as revenue.
- cperciva 5y agoThere are provisions for individual large donations to be excluded from the public-support calculation if the charity can make the case that they are "unusual". No idea if that would apply here though.
- mfer 5y agoFrom Wikipedia... > The foundation was started with an initial $50 million loan from Acton, who had left WhatsApp's parent company, Facebook, in September 2017.[8] The Freedom of the Press Foundation had previously served as the Signal project's fiscal sponsor and continued to accept donations on behalf of the project while the foundation's non-profit status was pending.[4] By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, which is due to be repaid on February 28, 2068. The loan is unsecured and at 0% interest. Appears it wasn't an outright donation. I've always wondered about the details behind this. Don't think I've seen something like this before.
- chippiewill 5y agoAn unsecured, 0% interest loan with a 50 year term may as well be a donation.
- nostromo 5y agoIt gives him more control over the org than a donation would have. For all intents an purposes, he owns Signal. He's the org's benefactor, lender, founder, board member, and now CEO.
- umeshunni 5y agoGiving money probably has some tax implications. Providing a loan does not.
- 5y ago
- Kye 5y agoPeople said the same about Keybase because of who was behind it. Just because it's got moneyed people running it doesn't mean they won't sell once their priorities change.
- alex_duf 5y agoIf you have one person giving a lot of money to an organisation, that person might be tempted to use their influence to change the direction of said organisation. If you have millions of people giving a small amount of money, chances are the organisation will try to preserve the users' best interest. Now I get it that the person who gave a lot of money also happen to be the interim CEO, but you gotta start somewhere.
- mukundesh 5y agoI hope signal and signal foundations stays along for a long time, would be good to model it around Wikimedia Foundation. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
- gyulai 5y agoI think 501c3s should be barred from taking huge donations like that in situations where it's not 100% clear that such a donor couldn't end up personally benefitting from influencing the charity. For example, I stopped giving money to Wikimedia Foundation when Google showed up with their millions. If there is even just a 0.0001% chance that donations from my hard-earned cash will ultimately just end up lining the pockets of billionaires, then I don't want any part of it. In Germany there is now a party running on a program trying to forbid political parties from taking donations from any individual above €5000 per year, and barring politicians from staying in office longer than two terms of 5 years each. -- This is roughly the standard I expect from any charity that wants to have any shot at getting money from me.
- underdeserver 5y agoHe co-founded the foundation. The die has been cast. The guy's worth 2.5B. I sincerely doubt he'd go to all that trouble to just make even more money. There are easier ways, with less scrutiny.
- gyulai 5y agoI don't think it's hard at all to imagine scenarios where his other assets could benefit from a player like Signal competing with Facebook, even if Signal is non-profit. This is similar to how Google Docs competes with Microsoft Office. It hurts Microsoft's cash-generation and thus benefits Google as they compete with Bing. If Google had been even smarter (or poorer, so as not to be able to afford footing the bill for Google docs entirely on their own), they could have established Google Docs as a 501c3 foundation, benefitting from tax exemptions and donations from individuals and just dominated that foundation through large donations and putting the right people in charge. This may or may not be an accurate analogy for Acton's true motives with Signal, but I just can't know the truth of it and am therefore not taking that risk with my cash.