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There's been a lot of debate in the US Web3 scene lately regarding the 'doxxing' of the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders after they raised a VC round of a few hund

There's been a lot of debate in the US Web3 scene lately regarding the 'doxxing' of the Bored Ape Yacht Club founders after they raised a VC round of a few hundred million dollars (I only put doxxing in scare quotes because their names were public info in their corporate filings and anyone could have seen them). This all seems interrelated. I could be convinced otherwise, but I've never seen a balance of equities where allowing anonymous ownership was more valuable than public transparency. See this other story today out of Canada as well, turns out a Chinese billionaire friend of Xi owns over $150M dollars in Canadian real estate: https://globalnews.ca/news/8637896/xiao-jianhua-family-companies-150-million-toronto-real-estate/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8637896/xiao-jianhua-family-compa... I could be convinced that beneficial ownership registries that are public only to regulators is an okay middle ground, but it boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners.

webmaven 5y ago
> [I]t boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners. At this point, examining the property records too closely to unmask the anonymous or pseudonymous owners risks a collapse in real estate prices. Quite a lot of these properties are purchased not as an investment per-se (though rising property prices are nice), but as a way of exfiltrating capital from various regimes for a variety of purposes, such as in case the need arises to bolt from the authorities and assume a new identity offshore. If shell corporations, DBAs, and false identities can't be used to reliably shield assets in this way (or if the difficulty/cost of setting up and maintaining the facade rise too much) in a particular market, a lot of real estate will be sold and the capital moved elsewhere.

webmaven 5y ago

> [I]t boggles the mind that we still let anyone anonymously accumulate assets where even regulators don't know the underlying owners. At this point, examining the property records too closely to unmask the anonymous or pseudonymous owners risks a collapse in real estate prices. Quite a lot of these properties are purchased not as an investment per-se (though rising property prices are nice), but as a way of exfiltrating capital from various regimes for a variety of purposes, such as in case the need arises to bolt from the authorities and assume a new identity offshore. If shell corporations, DBAs, and false identities can't be used to reliably shield assets in this way (or if the difficulty/cost of setting up and maintaining the facade rise too much) in a particular market, a lot of real estate will be sold and the capital moved elsewhere.