Kim Dotcom says he plans to raise $100M for his anti-spying communications network

Kim Dotcom, the controversial founder of MegaUpload, just revealed some interesting new details about his latest project and how he's been funding it.

Dotcom, who is currently living under house arrest in New Zealand while US officials try to extradite him for money laundering and copyright allegations, announced a few years back his plans to build a privacy-centric network for communicating securely.

So far he's launched a cloud storage service called Mega.co.nz, similar to Dropbox. Following that, Dotcom announced his idea for an entire decentralized networking protocol called MegaNet, which will offer people a secure and private network for communicating.

Since the first mention of MegaNet some years back, details about the upcoming service have been scant. Now we have learned that Dotcom has raised a significant chunk of money through equity crowdfunding to build his anti-spying dream project. 

Dotcom tweeted on Wednesday that he has already raised $40 million for his privacy-focused suite of products. He now plans to raise $100 million more using an equity crowdfunding platform called Bnk To The Future. 

Beyond these new funding details, here's what else we know about MegaNet:

• The new network would not be based on IP addresses
• Blockchain (the underlying technology powering bitcoin) will somehow be part of the network's architecture
• Mobile phones will be one of the primary devices powering the network

Dotcom explained in one of his many tweets describing MegaNet that it's a service that will provide, "No more DDoS or hacking. No more censorship. No more spying. All your mobile phones become an encrypted network."

In other words, MegaNet will be a new communications network that claims to be snoop-proof.

Dotcom told TorrentFreak that MegaNet will use the "current internet" as a "dumb pipe," meaning it will initially rely on existing internet protocols to power its communications network. Once it gets off the ground, however, he sees his new networking technology as running exclusively on smartphones.