The excitement around the company’s cryptocurrency is so great that it refuses large investors
Telegram is going to attract much more investment in the preliminary ICO (initial coin offering) – not $500 million, as expected, but $850 million. According to the information of the latest, the book of applications for the preliminary ICO is oversubscribed so much that the Telegram management refuses some investment offers, including money from Russia.
Pavel Durov doesn’t seek to attract Russian institutional money, because he wants to build a global company, – confirms the negotiator with the managers of the messenger.
There is a huge turmoil around ICO Telegram, – acknowledges an employee of one of the venture capital funds operating in the Silicon Valley. According to him, a lot of people asked him to help them invest in Telegram.
The money from ICO is needed by Telegram for the development of a new blockchain-platform – Telegram Open Network (TON) – with its own cryptocurrency, Telegram’s white paper recently described (a document describing the future of ICO). The creators of this platform compare their project with a distributed supercomputer and a money transfer system. In a new, decentralized economy, it can compete with Visa and Mastercard, the document states.
Attracted with the help of ICO funds, according to the white paper, will also go on the purchase of equipment and the development of TON related technologies.
The audience of the messenger is now 150 million people, and by January 2022 it will reach 1 billion, according to the Telegram’s plan, and with the growth of the audience, costs will also increase – more than 3 times by 2021, to $220 million.
The minimum investment from investors that Telegram is ready to consider is $20 million, states one of the people familiar with the participant in negotiations with Telegram, and the anchor investors Telegram proposes to invest at least $50 million. Of all those interested in crypto-monitors, Telegram will choose on the principle of proximity to the messenger’s leadership and the fame of the investor itself, but regardless of the country where this investor is working.
The psychology of interested investors is important, explains managing partner of Exante, co-founder of the Stasis.net platform Grigory Klumov: there are a lot of participants on the market who don’t want to invest in the classical economy, but regret that they did not succeed in the main trend of last year and did not invest in, for instance, bitcoin. These investors, Klumov continues, have rushed into Telegram’s understandable project – they just want to take advantage of a new opportunity to seize a part of the lost blockchain market and cryptocurrency.
Another negotiator with Telegram, who offered a $40 million investment to a messenger for a preliminary ICO but was denied, assures that already now some investors who have agreed with Telegram on investments suggest re-buying some of their future tokens, 40% more than they will buy themselves on the preliminary ICO. However, the failed investor continues, reselling rights to tokens, which will be released only in 2019, looks legally doubtful. Furthermore, these investors, turning into sellers, do not formally guarantee in any way that they will actually give part of the stake if the investment takes place, confirms another potential investor who claims to invest in Telegram and also received proposals on re-purchasing.
