Services 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 as “strategic partnership”.
The part that makes it not fraud is that both parties do actually do the work.
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.
What if instead of trading dollars I want to promise to trade dollars in the future? My investors need to see me capturing the market. Might even create some panic for added fun.
I remember in the couple years before the dot com crash in 2000, there was a lot of satire being written which was being taken very seriously. You couldn't tell what was serious and what was humor because both were absurd.
SEC calls this round-tripping. ASC 606 requires commercial substance — if both parties just book offsetting transactions, auditors flag the net cash flow as zero
This took me far too long to figure out that it was parody. I'm sure some VC has at least thought of building a SEC Violations as a Service platform. This is truly the dumbest timeline.
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.
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!"
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.
Well while the pile of shit makes it a joke, isn't there a real advantage here of legibility?
Like you have a measure (GDP) and it can't accurate measure things unless a sale occurs. So even if the money is a wash there was an actual activity occurring in the economy and now it's recorded.
Services 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 as “strategic partnership”.
The part that makes it not fraud is that both parties do actually do the work.
Thank god, it's satire
https://web.archive.org/web/20260515043739/https://www.revsw...
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.
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.
VAT carousel is fraud. This is pre-legal.
Anyone else getting "SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP"
Visiting the website's url (revswap.ai without www) redirects me to revai.com which is for sale on godaddy... Fastest enshittification ever?
Yes. :/ GrapheneOS over here
I'm on firefox on windows.
The best bit of tongue-in-cheek is in the FAQ:
> We take 2% of every swap. Then we swap our revenue with another platform.
Reminds me a bit of the NFT parody site https://nfd.miami
What if instead of trading dollars I want to promise to trade dollars in the future? My investors need to see me capturing the market. Might even create some panic for added fun.
I remember in the couple years before the dot com crash in 2000, there was a lot of satire being written which was being taken very seriously. You couldn't tell what was serious and what was humor because both were absurd.
SEC calls this round-tripping. ASC 606 requires commercial substance — if both parties just book offsetting transactions, auditors flag the net cash flow as zero
What if they buy each other's NFTs instead?
offsetting in what horizon? I give you 100 in q4 2026 you give me 100 in q1 2027
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.
Reinventing tax litigation from first principles
I don’t see anything topping the internet today better than this. Perfect, no notes.
Let no one have the excuse of "this was so unexpected" once it burns down.
(Pending) Crime-as-a-Service
I like this bit:
Read the whitepaper*
*there is no whitepaper
AKA YC companies buying from each other.
It’s down already. The fund exceeded its capacity.
Domain is down?
This can’t be legal, can it?
Some of the text can't be read if opened in Firefox with dark mode as default. Kudos to you guys for making it anyway!
What are the types of ARR the platform support?
Can it also generate SOC2 certifications in days?
They gotta become a platform, so likely more will come
I heard they started a hardware unit operating in stealth, but the rumor is they’re working on a box.
Is there a way we can leverage the Gig Economy to book large gains?
Activities 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
This took me far too long to figure out that it was parody. I'm sure some VC has at least thought of building a SEC Violations as a Service platform. This is truly the dumbest timeline.
I pay you a million dollars to eat dog shit. You pay me a million dollars to eat dog shit.
The result? The GDP goes up two million and we both have shit eating grins.
Isn't this highly illegal, and worst of all: this is cheating taxes ...
Let's just say if you really want to commit crimes, don't start with challenging the IRS. Just don't. There's so many horror stories about that.
As the FAQ suggests, it's "pre-legal".
But it's all for mocking the current market... so.
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!"
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.
Well while the pile of shit makes it a joke, isn't there a real advantage here of legibility?
Like you have a measure (GDP) and it can't accurate measure things unless a sale occurs. So even if the money is a wash there was an actual activity occurring in the economy and now it's recorded.
"This is a parody website. Any resemblance to real companies wash-trading their revenue is purely coincidental and also definitely happening."