on the crypto
Telegram operates the largest independent messaging app in the world. Populations of large countries such as Iran and Russia rely on it for uncensored communications. Civil activists from Hong Kong to Catalonia coordinate massive protests with Telegram.
In addition, the global cryptocurrency community makes a modest contribution to its 400 million active users. In other words, this company and its future are important for the free world.
But this future is at risk. Telegram fought pressure from national governments and competitors to support its users' freedom, but lost a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March.
In early 2018, Telegram conducted a private sale of its future cryptocurrency, receiving $ 1,7 billion from Silicon Valley's best venture capital funds, large private investors and a few other lucky ones.
The future
The fate of the company has now to be decided by interested parties. After April 30, they can exercise their contractual right to receive a refund. If this were to happen, the company would have dried up the money.
This week, the company offered investors a proposal to extend the deadline for another year. Telegram wants to use this year to solve its legal problems and launch the blockchain.
In return, he offered investors a token on the original terms or in the form of "another cryptocurrency". As a fallback option, Telegram promises 10% more of the full amount of the investment to be paid from the sale of the stake in the company to an outside party to the transaction discussed.
So the company plans to spend $ 1,87 billion (excluding the legal costs it will incur in the trial) which it does not have yet.
The past
Telegram used the peak of the 2017 ICO wave to finance its project without having to give up control of the company. Having a chance to create a public blockchain to compete with quotation Bitcoin and Ethereum was a secondary goal, but very achievable.
What mainly caused TON's problems was the fact that Telegram was too ambitious in its technological aspirations and didn't care to favor a community of developers and users around these ambitions.
The legal process may now explain why the company interacted so little with future users of its cryptocurrency, but the lack of transparency didn't help. The company seemed to believe that users, developers and investors would continue to support it regardless of everything.
The present
With this in mind, the following questions arise:
- Would the company be able to withhold sufficient funds to deal with the SEC, keep the app growing, continue to develop the blockchain and potentially fight further legal requests from some of its investors?
- If he did it for real, would he be able to win the dispute in a year and start TON as initially planned, or possibly find a buyer for his capital, willing to pay the consequences?
We'll see. What we hope is that the result does not affect the 400 million Telegram users.
