How to escape sanctions: Why only chosen can participate in Telegram’s ICO?
Telegram plans to launch ICO and create its own cryptocurrency. Why this event is so exciting and whose money will “pumped up” Pavel Durovs’ project?
Big losses
Telegram has existed for five years now and still does not make profit. Company spent $70 million only in 2017, and it was Durovs’ personal fortune from selling his remaining stake in Russia’s largest social network, VKontakte.
In his interview to Bloomberg, Pavel Durov said that he wanted to make money on this project — he would not sell it, but the messengers’ monetization could begin in early 2018.
Rumors that Pavel Durov wants to launch his own cryptocurrency appeared at the end of last year. Anton Rosenberg, former VK employee, was the one who reported about it.
“On the one hand this assumption seems logical. Pavel Durov loves hype and he really could decide that this is the good way to promote himself and to raise money for Telegram. And given his promise not to sell messenger it could be the only way” — Rosenberg wrote.
In 2018 his words were confirmed by TechCrunch with a reference to the “numerous sources”.
It claims Telegrams’ ICO could be the most ambitious token sale the industry has ever seen. The provider of a popular messaging app is seeking to raise $500 millions during pre-sale, which could help to raise the tokens’ capitalization to 3–5 billion dollars.
Accidental leakage or white paper?
A month ago, in the Telegram channels linked to the upcoming ICO Telegram Open Network (TON), appeared a white paper plan containing detailed information about the upcoming project. The document consists of 132 pages. As the author of white paper, the elder brother of Pavel Durov Nikolay, who is the co-founder of the Telegram project, is listed.
«The Telegram Open Network (TON) is a fast, secure and scalable blockchain and network project, capable of handling millions of transactions per second if necessary, and both user-friendly and service provider-friendly. We aim for it to be able to host all reasonable applications currently proposed and conceived. One might think about TON as a huge distributed supercomputer, or rather a huge “superserver”, intended to host and provide a variety of services», — described in the introduction.
As stated in memo, the defect of the overwhelming majority of existing blockchains is the low speed of transactions in comparison with transactions that can be conducted through international payment systems.
According to this document, the TON blockchain intends to conduct millions of transactions per second.
Unprecedented boom
Accidentally or not, the leak provoked even greater interest in the project.
The maximum amount of fees, raising during Telegrams’ preliminary initial coin offering, eventually increased from $ 500 million to $ 850 million. The minimum investment amounts that are required to start investing is $ 20 million, and for anchor investors it is $50 million, — Vedomosti reported.
According to the article, Telegram has already been forced to say no to a number of investors because of the excitement around its ICO. Initially, the organizers planned to raise $ 850 million, but the bids were eventually raised by $ 3.8 billion.
Whose money is in priority?
Whose money Pavel Durov agreed to take? Three key Silicon Valley venture capital funds invested in Telegram $60 millions — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital. But there is nothing unusual. These funds always invest in large projects. But we have to pay special attention to Russian investors.
Recodes’ sources said that Russian billionaire and founder of Mail.ru Group Yuriy Milner, who now owns the Russian social network “VKontakte”, became interested in Telegrams’ ICO and wants to invest at least $ 20 million.
The matter had come to light before the United States Department of the Treasury published a report about the possibility of imposing new sanctions against Russian businessmen and people from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s’ close circle.
According to the Washington Post, Milner is one of the Putins’ closest partners.
Just the other day we have learned about new high-profile names in the initial coin offering. As shown in United States Securities and Exchange Commissions’ forms, Pavel Durov reported to US authorities about raising $ 850 million from 81 investors.
One of the Russian investors was a businessman Roman Abramovich, — Vedomosti sources say. A person familiar with major ICO participants told Vedomosti that Abramovich could invest $ 300 million into messenger. Newspaper also claims that the entrepreneur is one of the first Russians who got the right to invest in Durov’s companies.
There are also founder and CEO QIWI Sergey Solonin and Wimm-Bill-Danns’ co-founder David Yakobashvili. Solonin has reported earlier that he invested $ 17 million during the pre-ICO in January 2018, becoming the second largest investor in Telegram (among Russian investors). Yakobashvili said that he invested $ 10 million in Durov’s messenger.
“It’s nice and developing company with great team, so I’ve decided to invest” — Yakobashvili said.
Instead of an epilogue
Many experts drew the attention to the fact that Pavel Durovs’ ICO is quite a strange event. The Telegrams’ creator has never confirmed cryptocurrency’s launching. There is only one warning about fraud with Grams (Telegrams token) on Twitter:
“If you see or receive offers to “buy Grams”, let us know”.
At the same time, the white paper document appeared out of nowhere, and the news that pre-ICO will be sort of a closed type because of participation of an oligarch under the sanction, pushes to conclusion about the largest money laundering.
Only a few months ago the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, gave Durov an ultimatum and threatened to block the Telegram.
But today everyone has already forgotten about this. Perhaps because Pavel Durov is no longer the enemy for the Russian government?
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