Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

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https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/telegram-open-network/

Selling a TON of cryptocurrency

Telegram is understood to be considering raising as much as $500 million in the pre-ICO sale at a potential total token value in the range of $3 billion to $5 billion. However, those figures could change before the ICO, which could come as soon as March. Those figures would make it possibly the biggest private crypto raise to date after Tezos, which raised over $230 million in July.

A pre-sale in an ICO is a minimum cap on investments (sometimes with discounts) to attract big investors (‘whales’) before a wider token sale to retail investors. The public, retail phase of an ICO tends to raise less because there is a long tail of people investing small sums. But front-loading the ICO with institutional investment inspires confidence for retail investors.

Those pre-sale investors may be required to place a minimum buy-in of $20 million if they’re outside of Durov’s inner circle. Sources say that the ICO will require real fiat currency like US dollars for buy-in, not Bitcoin or Ether as others ICOs have to date.

Top-tier institutional investment firms have expressed interest, but Durov is said to be wary of accepting their cash. One firm rumored to have pushed for a pre-sale allocation is Mail.Ru Group (formerly DST), founded by Russian emigre Yuri Milner. A spokesperson for DST did not reply to our inquiry about this story. Interestingly, Mail.Ru Group is the fund that ended up buying Durov’s last company VK.

Keeping Control

The white paper also makes clear that four percent of the supply of Grams (200 million Grams) will be reserved for Telegram’s development team with a four-year vesting period. Telegram also plans to retain “at least 52 percent” of the entire supply of the Grams cryptocurrency to protect it from speculative trading and maintain flexibility. The remaining 44 percent will be sold in both the public and private sale.

The currency will be listed on external exchanges and used inside the Telegram app.

Timing-wise, the first quarter of this year will see the launch of the Telegram External Secure ID, followed by an MVP of TON. The launch of the Telegram Wallet is slated for Q4 2018, and the creation of the TON-based economy could launch in Q1 2019. The rest of the TON Services would follow in Q2 2019.

Some in the crypto community remain skeptical of TON. “I just think this is the CEO’s way of monetizing Telegram, basically,” says Jackson Palmer, the founder of early cryptocurrency Dogecoin.