94 different investors have seriously bought into the much anticipated Telegram ICO and helped raise a staggering $850 Million in a second round pre-sale event that started on March 14th this year. The 94 investors have not been disclosed in a document submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the USA (SEC). The document is keen to note the final amount of $850 million mentioned earlier.
This brings the total raised in both pre-sale events of the ICO to a heavy $1.7 Billion. The first round raised a similar $850 Million, with a third round also expected to raise a similar amount. This will bring the total to $2.55 Billion even before the public is allowed to participate. Speculation has the final figure of funds raised at around $4 – $5 Billion.
According to a leaked and unofficial white paper, the Telegram project is aimed at using the blockchain for a P2P network that has a torrent like access to technology and smart contracts used to enforce availability. The network will also amplify user privacy using proxies in the network. The crypto currency used in the network will be known as TON coins or simply, Grams. TON stands for Telegram Open Network.
The leaked White Paper does not go into details about the TON distribution during the ICO but it says:
Four percent of the supply (200 million Grams) will be reserved for the development team with a
4-year vesting period. During the initial stage of active TON development, at least 52 percent of
the entire supply will be retained by the TON Reserve to protect the nascent cryptocurrency from
speculative trading and to maintain flexibility at the early stages of the evolution of the system.
The remaining 44 percent (2.2 billion Grams) can be sold in accordance with the formul: pn := 0.1 × (1 + 10−9)n USD
The price of the first token to be sold will be approximately 0.1 USD, with and each successive
token will be priced one billionth higher than the previous one. As a result, the additional supply
One thing to note, is that Telgram recently announced that it had reached a milestone of over 200 Million users in the last month alone. They go ahead to use the global demographics to compare that number of active users, to the population in the most populous countries. 200 Million would classify Telegram as the sixth most populous country in the world. Now imagine the potential of the TON crytocurrency on its network with such a following.
