Telegram's Billion-Dollar ICO Has Become a Mess (amazon.com) 34
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.
Tech journos spouting nonsense (Score:1)
Many tech journalists seem to fancy themselves polymaths and make statements on politics, finance, economics, sociology and other such topics that they think are sage, but which are actually rather doltish. Wired and Ars do this a lot, but so do other outlets.
What the author is describing is not a "mess." Raising money in pre-public private sales, or even never going public with a security at all, or creating a private secondary market due to desires from earlier investors to liquidate, are all pretty norma
Re: (Score:1)
RAR
Re: Tech journos spouting nonsense (Score:2)
Broken promises that lead to bigger gains for early whale investors is the whole problem crypto was invented to address. Funny how almost every new altcoin project seems to rediscover all the problems of traditional financial industry, without providing anything not already offerered by existing tokens.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Tech journos spouting nonsense (Score:2)
Yup, this is totally not news. Wow, journalist discovers how stuff works... since the dawn of man. This happens all the time and no one really cares. And no one should. If it's not public, then let it be. People gamble and lose money in many other more distructive ways.
Since it is all private monies, then the public's pensions and retirement funds shouldn't have any intended exposure. So... who cares. Let people with lots of money pass it back and forth to other such people.
And as for the initial buyers'
Re: (Score:2)
Over a billion dollar has changed hands, the dollars are real ... only the longer term value of the tulip bulbs is imaginary, for now there are still plenty of suckers to be fleeced.
Missed the Telegram ICO? (Score:2)
Never fear! I'm willing to part with 10K of my very own Dogecoins and I'm selling them for only $10 each! Buy now before their value goes above $100*!
* may or may not happen within the next 1000 years.
The WhatsApp People Lied, Telegram Won Big Time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Blockchain problem? (Score:2)
Why does /. link to Amazon Alexa developer pages? (Score:2)
Too Little, Too Late (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how much money they raise, they have lost the race. Pied Piper's decentralized internet platform is already hosting partner web sites and processing compute tokens.