Financing 11.7 billion, now Telegram's lEO is a big whale shipment?

Telegram is finally going to be available to the public.

However, this time Telegram adopted the lEO model, which was put on the cryptocurrency exchange Liquid and released to users in limited countries.

According to Liquid's official information, the instant messaging Telegram token GRAM will be exclusively launched on the cryptocurrency exchange Liquid at 8:00 am on July 10th (UTC time).

As an exclusive start-up platform, Liquid will also give the platform users a series of benefits. Users who hold the Liquid platform QASH will receive more discounts. The more the platform currency QASH, the more discounts.

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Interestingly, this public offering does not seem to have directly reached an agreement with Telegram, but was initiated by one of Asia's largest private equity buyers.

Information about the encrypted exchange's Liquid page shows that the largest holder of Gram Asia, the organization that sells this token, is from South Korea's organization Gram Asia. This is GRAM's first limited release to the public. Users can subscribe to GRAM in US dollars and USDC, but not to users in the US, Japan and Canada.

The sales price and specific quantity of the token Gram are not yet known, but according to the private placement price, it should not be lower than 1.37 US dollars.

“Gram token sales is the first step for TON, and we hope to bring public sales opportunities to all investors by working with Liquid,” said Dongbeom Kim, founder of Gram Asia.

“The reason for choosing Liquid is because it is a compliant exchange that protects users,” adds Dongbeom Kim, founder of Gram Asia.

Chaos out of control of the secondary market and Li Ghost scam

Indeed, compliance is important, especially for the cryptocurrency industry that is in a chaotic situation, and Telegram, which belongs to the top star project in the industry, broke the blockchain financing record in 2018.

Telegram, the blockchain project with the most funds raised in history, has attracted much attention with the blessing of top investors. After the planned public sales cancellation, the retail investors are more “hunger” and want to get on the bus. Get a slice of it.

There is a market where there is demand, which gives the fraudsters an opportunity. The scene was out of control: the prosperity and sell-off of the secondary market, the fake Li ghost website and the fraud, and many people were deceived to make this high-profile project Stained and questioned.

The blockchain project Telegram with the most funds raised in history

Founded in 2013 by the Durov brothers, Telegram is known for privacy and security and is not subject to government censorship.

In January and March 2018, Telegram successfully raised $1.7 billion through two rounds of financing, including top venture capitalists such as Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and KPCB, and international investment institutions.

According to the original white paper plan, it is planned to sell 600 million US dollars to private investors and the public, raising a total of 1.2 billion US dollars.

However, with the east wind of the cryptocurrency market bull market in the first half of 2018, this amount was advanced and exceeded. Moreover, in order to circumvent the legal problems brought about by the US SEC's supervision of the ICO project, in April 2018, Telegram made a bold decision to announce the cancellation of the lCO for the public.

The most direct result of the cancellation of lCO is that ordinary people can no longer invest in this token.

However, for projects with more money, the scam has never been absent.

As the largest cryptocurrency community gathering place, the point-to-point encryption instant messaging application Telegram has an innate advantage in the blockchain field, coupled with the endorsement of top investors, the largest fundraising project in history, and so on, leading to public expectations of Telegram. The demand is very strong.

How strong is demand at the time?

Look at the various Li Gui websites and scams that are born for "demand".

On February 28, 2018, a company called Telegram Open Network Limited was registered in the United Kingdom under the name of Telegram founder Pavel Durov. It was said to have paid $1.13 billion in paid-up capital, and was later hit by Telegram official Twitter, calling it a liar. the company.

Once again shipping cash?

The cancellation of the lCO for the public, while avoiding regulatory review and pressure, but the road behind Telegram is not smooth.

In the face of secondary market shipments, the scene was once out of control.

According to a source told by TechCrunch, Telegram officially knew about it, but they did not take any action, and the official did not come out because the current legal supervision in the cryptocurrency market was ambiguous. Gray zone.

Interestingly, the recent Gram store, Liquid, was released to the limited public for the first time in the IEO model. It is still not an official shipment, but is organized by Gram Asia, Asia's largest private equity buyer.

This can not help but make people doubt, this may be a buyer in the secondary market to cash out?

According to official announcements, Gram Token will be officially launched on October 31, 2019. After the TON Network is launched, the Gram tokens sold in this round will be unlocked and released to investors within the next 18 months.

Gram's unlocking is divided into four phases: the TON network releases 25% after 3 months, releases 25% after 6 months, releases 25% after 12 months, and releases 25% after 18 months.

Gradually increasing regulatory pressure

For the blockchain and cryptocurrency, the open and free market sounds very good, but the other side of the coin is the lack of supervision and the ambiguity of the current legal definition, which leads to an extremely chaotic cryptocurrency market. situation.

Because of this, this collection of thousands of pets in one encryption project, once prosperous secondary market and numerous Li Ghost scams, led to a chaos out of control.

With the recent tightening of the SEC's regulation of cryptocurrencies by the US SEC, it has also put considerable pressure on these projects.

On June 4, 2019, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the prosecution of Canadian cryptocurrency company Kik, accusing it of selling hundreds of millions of unregistered securities in the form of ICO in 2017, arguing that “Kik deprived investors of this move. Legal right to know and prevent investors from making informed investment decisions."

According to a court document issued by the SEC, the US SEC believes that the instant messaging application Kik raised more than $55 million in US funds through US ICO in 2017, saying that “the current Kin token transaction. The price is only half the value paid by public investors at the time."

Does this sound familiar?

Yes, when Telegram entered the blockchain and the currency, it was also questioned that it was the name of the blockchain concept to make up for the financial deficit of Telegram.

Telegram, which focuses on privacy and independence, has 200 million active users and sends 70 billion messages a day, making it one of the most popular messaging applications.

Although Telegram has tens of millions of users, it has no business model because the founder believes that "fast and secure messaging is also 100% free."

Telegram has publicized its plans for no profit, never sells ads, does not accept external investment, and will not be acquired.

However, the increasing cost has put a heavy financial pressure on the team.

According to CRV venture capitalists Justine Moore and Olivia Moore, in 2017, Telegram lost $70 million in server fees, user verification, security and employee salaries. The official said that if there is insufficient funding, it will Consider adding the right amount of paid functionality to your product to compensate for infrastructure development and developer salaries.

In the second half of 2017, under the hot blockchain and ICO Dongfeng, Telegram announced that it will launch TON in 2018, a “fast, scalable and user-friendly” blockchain network.

It is conceivable that the pressure of Telegram will be great after the US SEC sued Kik. Even if there is a private placement of buyers, the official can not come out without a face, it is best not to involve legal disputes, to avoid falling into the same troubles of Kik.

In fact, Kik’s prosecution by the US SEC is not the only event that reflects the gradual tightening of US SEC regulatory pressures.

On June 11, Bittrex, the US cryptocurrency exchange, officially announced that it will no longer provide US users with 32 cryptocurrencies including QTUM, GTO, DNT, STORJ, FCT, etc. from June 21st, the international platform Bittrex Users in International and other countries will not be affected.

The removal can be seen as a major move by the US SEC against the cryptocurrency securities management law. These banned tokens are considered by the SEC to be securities, indicating that the US crypto-exchange is facing a lot of regulatory pressure.

In fact, as early as the end of May this year, the crypto exchange Poloniex also took similar measures to ban 9 cryptocurrencies for users in the United States.

In addition, the currency-based centralized exchange Binance DEX recently announced that it will start “Geo Blocking” for users in 29 countries and regions in the US starting at 12:00 UTC on July 1st, but users Wallets can still be used as an alternative to holding and managing assets via VPN or using the wallet of the Supported Currency Chain (BNB) main network.

On June 12th, the International Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced that it will release the final guiding plan for cryptocurrency business on June 21 and the international standard for cryptocurrency companies in July.

At present, it is impossible to determine whether this is an official intent or a private shipment in the secondary market, but it is certain that the official did not make any statement about the lEO. A big possibility is that it is forced by the US SEC and even recently. The world's regulation of cryptocurrencies has gradually increased, putting a lot of pressure on the project side to avoid falling into the same troubles of Kik.

question

The Telegram, which is endorsed by Star Halo and top investors, still faces many questions.

Although the traffic is huge, there are still many people who are not optimistic about the tokens it sends, questioning the feasibility of its underlying technology, and the project valuation is too high.

According to the official plan, Telegram Open Network aims to build a decentralized application ecosystem including TON storage, TON App Store service, TON DNS and TON payment based on chat tools through Telegram combined with blockchain. These functions are integrated to meet the needs of most people's daily lives. They only need to install a Telegram, from communication to payment, from the Internet to entertainment. The decentralized blockchain can meet all the needs of privacy.

Analysts at the cryptocurrency fund Pantera Capital believe that Telegram's white paper's interpretation of the underlying technology is particularly pale, and whether the platform can be successfully developed is a problem.

Another point of view is that the short-term financing of 1.7 billion US dollars, up to 200 billion US dollars in the valuation is too high, relying on the currency can not afford this valuation.

What is the concept of financing $1.7 billion?

With $1 billion in financing, Uber spent five years, while Facebook spent seven years, and Telegram's $1.7 billion financing took only three months.

Even if the project is a good project, the high expectations of the project, coupled with the financing itself in the bull market, led to a high valuation of Telegram.

In March of this year, American online car company Lyft conducted an IPO at a price of US$72, raising $2.3 billion. Currently, its share price has fallen by 33%.

In addition, according to documents sent to potential investors, Telegram plans to invest $400 million in the development of TON, and promised to launch in October 2019, once overdue, will be refunded to investors. However, in another document, the company stated that it could not guarantee that they had sufficient funds to refund.

"Under the terms of the purchase agreement, there is no guarantee that the issuer or Telegram will have sufficient funds to pay any termination amount (as defined in the purchase agreement). Neither the Telegram nor the issuer has any trustee or other obligation to use token sales. The funds pay for the buyer’s interest…"

This time, the Telegram official announced that it will start the main network before October 31. It is precisely the deadline for the promises in the agreement. This coincidence makes people wonder whether the progress of the project is really completed on schedule or to fulfill the promise to avoid retreating. paragraph?

This time, lEO is essentially a sale of SAFT in the secondary market.

SAFT is the “Future Token Agreement”. According to the terms of SAFT, the seller promises to hand over the token to the buyer at an agreed price on a future date, which is equivalent to a futures contract.

Legally speaking, it is illegal for SAFT to sell in the secondary market. Although illegal, this model is a "smart" marketing method.

For the project side, before the full launch, it is not a bad thing to use the lEO model to test the market heat and the popularity of the hot project. The exchange is of course also willing to participate, as it is also good for improving exchange traffic and brand awareness. For private equity buyers, it is also a good deal to make a difference in advance shipping.

Liquid CEO Kayamori is confident in this lEO sales, although the number of tokens is still uncertain, but if the demand exceeds supply, it will consider increasing the total amount of the issue.

Although it is impossible to confirm whether Telegram’s public offering is officially instructed, or another secondary market buyer’s cash, it is certain that if the test is proved to have a market, there may be more early buyers in the future. Ship this way.

If you want to participate in this lEO, 31QU believes that there are several points worth noting: 1) At present, the Gram token cannot be traded, transferred and redeemed before the TON main online line. After the main online line, it is divided into 4 stages. Out. 2) The rush to purchase GRAM requires strict KYC certification and is only open to limited countries . Residents including the United States, Canada and Japan cannot participate in this token purchase (see the table below for more details):

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