ICO Telegram collected $ 850 million from 81 investors

Pavel Durov, the creator of the Telegram messenger, reported on the progress of the ICO, which was announced earlier. As it turned out, investors invested more than $ 850 million. This amount was provided to the development team of the messenger by 81 investors. The ICO report was sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The report identifies two companies related to ICO, both registered in the British Virgin Islands: Telegram Group Inc. and TON Issuer Inc. Both companies are managed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov.

Payment from the first investor was received by the company on January 29, 2018. All funds raised will be used to develop the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain platform. The means of payment between the participants of the platform is its own token.

The document provided by the Durovs in the SEC is Form D, which is usually used for “notification of an exempt offer of securities,” as reported by Vedomosti. According to experts, this form is used by small companies to attract money from venture investors.
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Investors are not named in the document itself, but they managed to find out about some of them. In particular, the founder of Qiwi, Sergey Solonin himself, said that he had invested $ 17 million in Telegram. David Yakobashvili, founder of Wimm-bill-dann, provided another $ 10 million. In addition, it was not without the participation of Roman Abramovich - several sources told about his participation in the project, who are familiar with the details of the transaction. Moreover, the amount of investment provided by Abramovich is much higher than all other investors and amounts to about $ 300 million.

True, the representative of Abramovich John Mann said that the information about the participation of the entrepreneur in the ICO Telegram does not correspond to reality. Other sources report that the maximum amount of investment provided by one investor is $ 20 million, so the $ 300 million allegedly invested by Abramovich is a “duck”.



Anyway, there were much more people who wanted to participate in the ICO Telegram than those who were admitted to the tokensale (and that was not a tokensail in the direct sense of the term). About the rush around Telegram can be judged by the number of applications for the provision of investments - they were filed at $ 3.8 billion . A part of small investors gathered in groups for joint participation in ICO Telegram. Sources say that some members of the tokensale managed to invest only $ 50,000 - $ 100,000, and not several million, as required by the organizers of the tokensale. The leadership of the tokensale had to refuse a number of investment proposals, including Russian ones.

As for ICO, the Telegram tokens primary sale process has many differences from ordinary ICOs. In this case, it’s rather a private placement of securities in a common currency - dollars and euros. Investors buy the rights to the internal cryptocurrency of the project, and until the launch of TON, they receive securities that simply give a guarantee of participation in the future distribution of tokens.

Another difference is that in the current ICO not only (far from only) crypto-enthusiasts took part, but also traditional investors, accustomed to working with conventional investment tools. Probably, all participants were attracted, firstly, by the presence of a long-running and successful product with millions of users and secondly, by the fame of Pavel Durov (and his brother Nicholas too), which can serve as a guarantee of honesty of the promises of the ICO organizers.

Not so long ago the price of Gram tokens became known. At Geektimes, it was already reported that the first investors were able to buy tokens for only 30 cents, and in the near future, the rate is expected to rise to $ 1.45- $ 3.5. Already, some investors who have received the opportunity to take part in the tokensale resell their shares with a 40% mark-up, preferring to go into profit here and now, rather than in a few months. Actually, this strategy can also be justified. Now it remains only to wait for the announcement of the official development strategy from the company itself.