Telegram Tries to 'Clarify' Gram Crypto Project Amid Ongoing SEC Fight

Telegram Tries to 'Clarify' Gram Crypto Project Amid Ongoing SEC Fight

The announcement turned heads in late 2017, and a leaked set of white papers further generated enthusiasm for Gram’s upcoming Initial Coin Offering (or ICO, the standard method to raise funds for prospective cryptocurrencies). The event went on to raise an unexpected $1.7 billion – at the time, the next most successful ICO raised less than $300 million. Since 2014, the Durov brothers have lived in self-imposed exile, with Pavel purchasing citizenship from St. Kitts and Nevis while spending much of his time in Dubai.

Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, TON will have a high throughput of a million transactions per second. TON's users will not have to wait weeks to conduct one transaction or pay high commission fees to transfer funds immediately. Besides, the platform will work on Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, which will make payments safe. TON has announced a new deadline of April 30th, 2020, but whether or not the SEC case will allow for a successful launch is yet to be seen. In the last two months, two TON employees have undergone depositions, with Durov scheduled to have given one this week in Dubai.

Moreover, users will also be able to bypass the remittance fees for transferring of funds across global borders and make micropayments, which otherwise would incur a huge credit card fees. The project of the future Telegram is very similar to the famous Chinese application WeChat that previously was just a messenger like Telegram. But now it combines the functions of a social network, a payment platform, a site of matchmaking service, a provider (you can order a taxi or a meal in the app), a trading platform, an interpreter, and even a personal cabinet on payment utilities. While this may come as a disappointment to investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts who were expecting a minor fintech revolution, Durov’s original vision has still changed the game for tech companies looking to break into the industry.

ICO Drops is an independent ICO (Token Sale) database and is not affiliated with any ICO project or company. The validity of transactions is provided by “validators” who receive a commission for this. TON DNS is a service that will reportedly “allow users to access decentralized services as easily as browsing the World Wide Web” by assigning accounts with human-readable names. TON Services is presented as a platform for third-party DApps, smart contracts, and decentralized browsing experience.

Telegram or its employees may, but do not commit to, hold any Grams following the launch of the TON Blockchain. To the extent they do, they will not take part in voting or validating in connection with the TON Blockchain. This voluntary decision was made in order to avoid any perception that Telegram or its employees can or will exercise control over the TON Blockchain following its launch. In light of recent events, we wanted to take the time to publicly clarify certain aspects of the TON Blockchain and Grams as we continue to prepare for a successful launch of the project.

GRAM coins are the native unit of exchange for the TON blockchain, just like ETH is to Ethereum. Telegram’s native coin will be used for many processes within the blockchain, such as paying fees, micro-payments, access to decentralized applications, and attaching ‘value’ to messages sent through the existing Telegram Messenger app. However for some investors, to whom the ICO public phase was closed, the opportunity to invest in GRAM, the Telegram Open Network’s proposed native token, was scarcely recognized.

But despite Telegram’s early end to their ICO raise, the TON platform still became the second most successful ICO by amount raised in history. Telegram is also "under no obligation" to establish a TON Foundation, the organization designed to “promote and support the TON Blockchain,” according to the early marketing materials, the post said.

Due to the legal proceedings, the company now offers to effectively freeze the blockchain project. Before the SEC filed its lawsuit, TON was scheduled to launch by the end of this month. The company has informed the New York court reviewing the case that it can suspend all operations with grams until the legal issues around the coin offering are resolved. There’s been much speculation over Telegram‘s plans for its TON blockchain and cryptocurrency tokens called Grams.

Button focuses on optimizing usability and security for users looking to split the finances of shared experiences with friends. A good use case is friends sharing housing, ticket and dining expenses (like Coachella) within an existing group chat, like Telegram.

This initial stage was just the pre-sale stage of the ICO which was mainly targeted at the prominent figures of the investment community as well as venture capital firms who were given steep discounts for buying Telegram’s own native cryptocurrency tokens. According to the report from Bloomberg, the pre-sale was initially targeted at $600 million but higher investors interest and demand caused it to push the amount to $850 million. Popular messaging app Telegram is now seriously eyeing on the blockchain space.

The Telegram Open Network, unlike many of its 2018 crypto peers, isn’t simply just another re-hashed ICO project built on top of an existing blockchain. Instead, the TON will feature its own native chain, called the TON Blockchain, and likewise its own cryptocurrency, the GRAM coin; along with the TON virtual machine for smart contracts, and its own consensus mechanisms. Telegram Open Network (TON) is a blockchain platform of Telegram instant messaging system from the team of Pavel Durov. The list of services offered includes messaging, Gram cryptocurrency and many others. You may have heard that since 2017 the team at Telegram has been developing a new blockchain platform called the TON Blockchain and native cryptocurrency called Grams.

We hope that as a result of this project Grams will become a true complement to traditional currencies, improving the speed, efficiency and security of everyday commercial transactions globally. We believe that the TON Blockchain technology will create a stable ecosystem and represents a significant improvement upon previous platforms in terms of speed, usability and scalability. The early ‘MVP’ version of TON is scheduled to be released in Q2 of 2018 while the Telegram’s wallet service is expected to go live by the final quarter of this year. Other services in the TON network will be launched in 2019 as the company is still working on its underlying blockchain technology. It will work on mobile devices without downloading the entire blockchain, and only users will store the private keys.

In case the majority agrees, the messenger plans to proceed with a new launch date before April 30, 2020, using the time to make additional investments and further develop the blockchain platform. However, if either of the two groups of investors disagrees with the delayed start, they will be partially compensated and fewer gram tokens will be issued at launch. Reaching out to the participants in the two fundraising rounds held last year, Telegram has updated investors on the situation around the TON project and its disagreement with the SEC’s arguments.

It said it wanted to maintain the “status quo” until the case had been resolved. In terms of service from October 2019, Telegram had suggested that its messaging app and wallet would work together or would be a standalone app. Bhushan is a FinTech enthusiast and holds a good flair in understanding financial markets.

Judge Castel accounted for that, but he did order the company to turn the documents over in the not-too-distant future. He ordered Telegram to set forth a “proposed schedule for a review of the requested bank records to ensure that production of such records complies with foreign data privacy laws,” by Thursday. Telegram said it would deliver the tokens to the purchasers by no later than October 31, 209 and the purchasers would be able to sell them into the market. According to the SEC complaint Telgram failed to register their offers and sales of the tokens, which the SEC considers to be securities. The defendants sold 2.9 billion tokens at discounted prices to 171 initial investors, including more than 1 billion of the company’s tokens to 39 U.S. buyers.

Securities and Exchange Commission has said it has filed an emergency action and received a restraining order for the $1.7 billion planned token offering of Telegram’s blockchain. In the first quarter, a basic on TON economy should be created in Telegram, and in the second, all TON services, TON storage and TON proxy should be started. Third, you should NOT expect any profits based on your purchase or holding of Grams, and Telegram makes no promises that you will make any profits. Grams are intended to act as a medium of exchange between users in the TON ecosystem.