Telegram attracts $850M in the second atypical ICO, tells SEC about it

Pavel Durov’s Telegram has repeated the success of the first initial coin offering and attracted over $800 million as a result of the second one, tells SEC Form D sent by the Durov brothers to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The type of offered securities is labeled as “Purchase Agreements for Cryptocurrency”.

Telegram needs these funds to develop a new platform called Telegram Open Network or TON. Judging by the leaked white paper which is almost certainly not a fake, the structure will be based on the blockchain and the new messenger versions will have new tokens called Grams.

The first initial coin offering (as well as the second one) was held only for chosen investors who received notifications in advance. Due to the wide interest to Pavel Durov and Telegram in Russia (the businessman originates from this country), several influential businessmen have confirmed their participation in the first round of token sale.

Telegram itself, while it may have a bright future, is not at its finest moment right now: yesterday it went off the grid for 4 hours due to some problems with electricity in its data centers, as explained by Pavel Durov in the social media.

Power outage at a @telegram server cluster causing issues in Europe. Working to fix it from our side, but a lot depends on when the datacenter provider puts the power equipment in order.

— Pavel Durov (@durov) March 29, 2018