According to public documents, Telegram's ICO has raised at least $1.7 billion.
Two rounds of $850 million
According to a March 29 document sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Telegram's long-awaited ICO raised an additional $850 million in a token sale that began March 14.
94 investors participated in this offer, with an average stake of approximately $9 million. The previous round, which took place last January, also raised $850 million. This time it had attracted 81 investors.
Both of these financings were reported to the SEC under Rule 506 ("c") of Securities Act Regulation D. Rule 506 allows a non-registered issuer of financial securities - in this case, the "TON Issuer Inc" entity - to raise funds from accredited investors. However, before they are allowed to resell them, they must retain their assets for a predetermined period.
Telegram raised a total of $1.7 billion. This is slightly more than the $1.6 billion that Pavel Durov, its CEO, planned to raise last February.
A very opaque ICO
Telegram has been very discreet at this time - both about the details of its new blockchain ecosystem and the implementation of its ICO. It seems impossible, for the moment, to know if this is Telegram's last round, or if the company intends to raise additional funds.
This lack of transparency had scared away several potential participants, first and foremost the Pantera Capital crypto-currency investment fund.
Telegram had indicated that the Telegram Open Network (TON) - whose native Token is called the "Gram" - will constitute a "third generation blockchain". According to the company, it should be able to process more than one million transactions per second, at virtually no cost. Many developers, however, have expressed scepticism about the reality of such a technological feat.
By early January, some extracts from the TON's White Paper had leaked. In particular, it was learned that this network would be based on a system of validation by proof of stake ("Proof-of-Stake"), and that it would consist of a main chain (master chain) and a maximum of 292 secondary chains (side chains).
For financial analyst Aaron Brown, the TON could reach a "Market Cap" of 200 billion dollars within 5 years. However, it considers this to be an optimistic assumption and considers the price charged to ICO participants to be too high.
source www.crypto-france.com
Reference : CCN
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