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Telegram's Billion-Dollar ICO Has Become a Mess (amazon.com)
Jon Russell and Mike Butcher from TechCrunch report of the mess that is Telegram's billion-dollar initial coin offering (ICO): Telegram's ICO was supposed to be a record-breaker to develop a platform that brings the decentralized internet to life. Instead, it has become a mess with the tightly controlled fundraising process in disarray as early backers sell their tokens for handsome returns. The company recently canceled the public sale piece of its ICO, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, after it raised $1.7 billion from private sale investors, according to SEC filings. But the issues date back further.
Telegram's grand vision is to build the TON (Telegram Open Network), a blockchain-based platform that extends its messaging app, which counts 200 million active users, into a range of services that include payments, file storage, censorship-proof browsing and decentralized apps hosted on the platform. According to the original whitepaper, the plan was to raise $1.2 billion using both invite-only private investors and an open sale to the public. Telegram later extended the raise to $1.7 billion before it canceled the public sale altogether. That's almost certainly because it had already raised enough money to develop TON without the risk of running into the SEC's ongoing ICO probe by soliciting money from the public. The result is that the ordinary people can't buy Telegram's Gram crypto token until it is released on exchanges. There's currently no timeline for that. But, with massive demand for the messaging app and deep discounts for early backers, a secondary market for buying and selling tokens early has emerged -- with huge returns already realized by some.
Telegram's grand vision is to build the TON (Telegram Open Network), a blockchain-based platform that extends its messaging app, which counts 200 million active users, into a range of services that include payments, file storage, censorship-proof browsing and decentralized apps hosted on the platform. According to the original whitepaper, the plan was to raise $1.2 billion using both invite-only private investors and an open sale to the public. Telegram later extended the raise to $1.7 billion before it canceled the public sale altogether. That's almost certainly because it had already raised enough money to develop TON without the risk of running into the SEC's ongoing ICO probe by soliciting money from the public. The result is that the ordinary people can't buy Telegram's Gram crypto token until it is released on exchanges. There's currently no timeline for that. But, with massive demand for the messaging app and deep discounts for early backers, a secondary market for buying and selling tokens early has emerged -- with huge returns already realized by some.
The WhatsApp developers kept going on and on about how they hate datamining, storing user data, selling user data to advertisers and so on. "We'll never be like the services that just track their users for gathering personal data, targeting advertising" bla bla bla bla bla. Lots of people bought into that. Then Facebook offered the devs Billions, and they sold out immediately. WhatsApp is part of Zuckerborg's personal data stealing empire now. Part of 1984-book.This of course sent millions of people over to rival service Telegram. And guess what - Telegram is just as good as WhatsApp for casual communication, without being owned by Facebook. If anybody is in trouble, its WhatsApp, not Telegram. Its WhatsApp that has become completely untrustworthy as a personal communication tool, or even worse, a business communication tool, not Telegram - or at least not yet. Maybe Telegram will get bought out as well. Oh well, how hard is it to code a rival to Telegram - another alternative will just spring up, and people will move again.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.