Telegram CEO: TON no longer retains any tokens after TON is released, and has now stopped spending resources on development and testing

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov testified about the company's alleged violation of U.S. securities laws during a $ 1.7 billion Gram token sale in 2018.

Source: Pixabay

According to the relevant court order, this statement was held on January 7 and January 8, and was held by a court reporter designated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on behalf of the court reporting service hired by the plaintiff.

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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues 18-hour witness statement to question how Telegram spent $ 1.7 billion

According to the official transcript, this witness statement was held in Dubai, with Telegram lawyer Alexander Drylewski and SEC official Jorge Tenreiro participating Submit testimony. The first part of the witness statement on January 7 begins at 11:21 AM local time and ends at 10:00 PM, while the second part of the witness statement on January 8 is shorter, starting at 10:23 AM and ending At 06:09 PM.

This time the witness statement was videotaped, but the official text records available were fragmented, and most of the video was omitted for alleged confidentiality.

During a total of approximately 18 hours of presentation (including breaks), the SEC asked Telegram extensively about the company's costs and the funds used to form the company. In answering one of these questions, Durov replied that the company plans to continue spending money in a manner similar to previous years' budgets:

"My expectation is that we will continue to spend money in a similar way to last year or this year (or last year and early this year). Therefore, we do not expect a big change before the launch of TON because we will no longer be developing And testing TON resources, so we expect some costs may be reduced. "

Telegram will allocate some Gram coins to its developers

Tenreiro was further inquired that at the time of issue, Telegram employees would hold a percentage of 5 billion Gram tokens in circulation. In response, Durov reaffirmed that Telegram will not retain any Gram after the Telegram Open Network (TON) was launched. The Telegram CEO added that the company plans to allocate 4% of Gram among its developers, noting that they are still "assessing" the exact number:

"I can confirm again that no Gram tokens will be retained after the release of Telegram. We mentioned in the release materials that we plan to allocate 4% of Gram to the development team, approximately 200 million, and in this case, We are still assessing whether the original plan will continue, whether all or part of these 200 million tokens will be allocated to developers using TON. "

The SEC has not missed an opportunity to ask Telegram about its developer incentives, and Durov mentioned the smart contract competition announced by Telegram in September 2019. The executive added that the bonus budget "still exists" and the company continues to accept and reward individuals in the program.

Durov funded Telegram by selling funds from VKontakte between 2012 and 2018

According to a recorded transcript obtained from the Russian publication "The Bell", Durov funded Telegram with personal expenditures on the sale of VKontakte (VK) in 2014. Durov founded this Facebook-like Russian social media site in 2006, claiming that he has been using VK funds from 2013 to 2018.

In addition, Durov said that Telegram's number of employees has not changed much since 2017, including 25 employees who "write code". However, the company also has "hundreds of independent contractors."

As Cointelegraph recently reported, Telegram must provide the court with its edited bank records by February 26. Although the legal battle between the SEC and Telegram has begun, some software manufacturers continue to work on designing the TON blockchain blockchain browser for this product.

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