Telegram: the largest pre-ICO in the history
Nowadays, cryptocurrencies are getting our attention more and more. Companies from different countries all around the world create their own cryptocurrencies and Russia is not an exception.
Russian non-profit company Telegram Inc. announced the launching of its own blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Description
It is worth to start from the small description of Telegram.
Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging service that gives opportunities to users to share messages, photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files of any type. Telegram differs from other messengers because of its high speeds, excellent APIs, protection of personal correspondence from hacking (even from special authorities), secret chats with the possibility of self-destruction of correspondence and anonymity of users.
The service was launched by Pavel Durov – a Russian entrepreneur, founder of social network VK.
Telegram blockchain
Telegram is planning to launch its own blockchain the “Telegram Open Network” or TON.
The decentralized blockchain platform will work in two ways. The first one is cryptocurrency economy inside the app. The second way presents protection against attacks of nation-states, as for example, Iran, where Telegram was temporally banned.
TON can be compared to WeChat that works in China and acts as a chat app and a payment mechanism at the same time. However, an advantage of TON is that it will be decentralized, that will offer more security for users. Another pro is that TON will let its users hold fiat and Telegram’s currency in a wallet.
But the main advantage of TON is the speed and volumes of transactions. Pavel Durov is promising nearly 1 million transactions per second. TON will be able to compete with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc.
Features of TON
TON Services – a platform that enables third-party services to create decentralized mobile apps and services.
TON DNS – a service for assigning human-readable names to accounts, services, contracts and nodes.
TON Payments – a platform for micropayments between users, bots and other services.
TON Blockchain – it will consist of the main chain and 2-to-the-power-of-92 accompanying blockchains.
Pre-ICO
Experts suppose that Telegram pre-ICO sale will be the largest, most ambitious initial coin offering.
Telegram is going to create its own cryptocurrency. It will have a name “Gram” and will be tied to Telegram’s chat app. It shall be released in January 2019 or end of 2019 at least.
Telegram plans to start a private sale in February and public sale in March 2018.
The aim of the Telegram is $850 million in a private sale of tokens and $1.15 billion in a public sale. So $2 billion sale is the largest ICO ever in the history.
The minimum investment should be $20 million, investors who are less reliable should bring not less than $50 million.
Investors in private sales will get a discount that can reach 50% of the price in public sale. The important fact is that after the release of tokens, investors who got them in private sales will have to hold on to their coins for a lock-up period of 18 months.
Conclusion
The success of TON is more likely because of the popularity of Telegram, it is used by 180 million people all around the world. Experts consider Telegram as the most appropriate social network for cryptocurrency launching because of the amount of audience and its system. Nowadays, there is huge agiotage around Telegram and its pre-ICO, it can raise the price of tokens to incredible heights.