Editors Note: This article comes fromBeep News (ID: gh_8f53b5712d81), Author: Breeze, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
, Author: Breeze, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Durov once wrote in his autobiography: I am not fighting for freedom, but I am using my existence to prove that freedom has not disappeared. Durov is a rebel of this era, he competes with power , Competing with money.
Can Durov still be a free agent today?
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SEC sniping Telegram, four options for Telegram
On Oct. 12, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a lawsuit seeking “urgent action and obtaining a temporary restraining order” against two offshore entities of Telegram’s TON ICO, describing its Grams as “illegal digital transactions online.” Asset Securities Sales.
Telegram previously said in documents sent to potential investors that it would refund money if the product was not launched by October 2019.
Telegram was notified by the SEC, and this date happened to be before the date of the online betting, Telegram can be said to be unlucky.
October 31st is imminent. Time is running out for Telegram to make a choice. The outside world has also made speculations about Telegrams coping strategies this time. Beep News sorted out the four options that Telegram can make, and speculated on the implementability of the four options.
A. Telegam cannot be launched, and the funds will be refunded in full
According to Telegrams promise, if Telegram fails to issue coins on October 31, it should refund the funds in full. In this regard, Wan Hui, founder of Primitive Ventures, commented on Weibo, If you really get a full refund as agreed, it may be a king of heaven project with the highest return rate after the bear market.
Analysis: This choice is deadly for the TON team, and it is also the worst choice. Telegram is clearly not stupid enough to let its efforts go to waste. In addition, the early investors of Telegram did not allow TON to die in the SEC. Early investors put huge hopes in Telegram, and they expected that the launch of TON would bring them greater profits. There is still a lot of uncertainty about this option.
B. Delay the launch and choose to pay compensation to the SEC
After the SEC issued an emergency action against Telegram, CNBC host Ran NeuNer tweeted that according to my calculations, Telegram needs to pay the SEC $10.2 million (a fine). Previously, Block.one paid a $24 million fine (0.6%) for raising $4 billion; Telegram raised $1.7 billion, and the 0.6% was $10.2 million.
Analysis: If there is such an option, compared to refunding 1.7 billion US dollars, compensating 10 million to let the SEC give a green light, this is simply not a big deal for the TON project, not to mention that there are so many donors behind TON blessing.
However, TON at this time is not much comparable to the previous EOS. Before the SEC bites EOS, the EOS mainnet has already been launched, and the SEC can only ask the Block.one team to compensate. In addition, EOS has almost no other business before ICO, so it has no information to disclose to the SEC, and Telegram is a company with real landing scenarios, and it should disclose more information to the public. Obviously, the SECs attitude towards TON will be more determined, and the punishment for TON will be more severe.
C. Delay the launch and choose to pay compensation to American investors
In addition, some lawyers said that in addition to paying compensation to the SEC. Durovs team has another solution. It can return the investment to the 39 U.S. investors, after which Durov can proceed with the token offering with or without SEC approval.
Analysis: This option looks feasible on the surface, but it is not a long-term solution. The relationship between the TON project and American investors is obviously not overnight. After TON is launched, it is still difficult to say that American residents will not buy Gram tokens. It is only a matter of time before the SEC will supervise TON.
D. Postponing the launch and not refunding the funds
Analysis: The great success of the TON project in the private placement stage largely depends on the endorsement of the telgram team and Durov himself. If they cant go live on schedule, and they dont plan to return the funds, no matter what reason they refuse to return the funds, the credibility of the Telegram team will be severely damaged.
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Telegrams internal and external troubles
In March 2018, Telegram had reached 200 million monthly active users, with at least 700,000 new users joining every day. This is the highlight moment of Telegram.
However, such an influential product in the world is actually facing its internal and external troubles.
When Telegram was designed, Durov declared war on the world for freedom. Telegram is a social platform that is not monitored by any third-party organization. Telegram adopts a new type of MTProto encryption protocol, users can chat one-to-one encrypted.
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Schematic diagram of Telegram application architecture
Durov made a huge investment in Telegram. He sold everything he could, including fixed assets such as houses, furniture, and cars, and then invested all the money in exchange for the development of Telegram. In addition, Durov’s income from other businesses will also be provided to the Telegram team in a timely manner.
For a long time, in order to ensure the independence of Telegram, Telegram is completely owned by Durov and his relatives. Telegram founder Pavel Durov claims that he will never sell advertisements, accept external investment, and will not be acquired.
Since Telegram has no business model at all, Telegrams business has been burning money. In 2017 alone, $70 million was burned, mainly for server fees, user verification, and employee salaries. If Telegram continues to fail to generate revenue and spending levels continue to increase, the company could eventually face bankruptcy.
Foreign aggression: the siege and interception of local governments
Another layer of Telegrams embarrassment as a product is its unpopularity with governments around the world.
Telegrams privacy protection is so good, it also attracted a large number of terrorists to gather, and even became a base for ISIS terrorists to communicate.
In this violent incident in Hong Kong, Ho Junyao, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, wrote to the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Carrie Lam, on the 15th of this month, proposing to ban some online platforms, including Lian Deng and Telegram.
He Junyao mentioned in the letter that Lian Deng and the communication software Telegram are the social platforms that the thugs have been relying on. The thugs posted seditious and inflammatory speech on these platforms, which violated Article 200 of the Hong Kong Law, Criminal Crimes Ordinance, Article 7, Chapters 9 and 10.
Prior to this, many countries had announced to block Telegram.
On April 13, 2018, because Telegram did not provide the key to decrypt user messages to the Russian Federal Security Service, the Russian court announced that Telegram services would be blocked within the country.
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On May 2, 2018, due to the fact that Telegram provided a safe zone for the extremist organization Islamic State in multiple attacks in Iran and played a role in multiple protests, the Iranian court announced that people were prohibited from using Telegram services.
Under the constraints of many realities, Telegrams internal and external troubles can hardly support Durovs ideals.
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The TON plan that is tired of money
In 2017, Telegram launched the cryptocurrency project - TON (Telegram open network). In Telegrams vision, TON is a new economic system that uses cryptocurrency as a medium to exchange goods and services.
Compared with Telegram, which has a single communication function, TON provides more three-dimensional and comprehensive services, and emphasizes the attribute of economy.
Durovs layout of the blockchain can be seen as a self-help action by the Telegram team, and it can also be seen as the ambition of Durovs geek spirit in another world.
According to the plan in TONs original white paper, the plan is to sell 600 million US dollars to private investors and the public, raising a total of 1.2 billion US dollars. However, Telegram has achieved this goal ahead of schedule. After two rounds of private financing, Telegram raised a total of 1.7 billion US dollars, including top venture capital and international investment institutions including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and KPCB.
In the bear market, Telegram raised real dollars. Compared with other blockchain projects, Telegram can be said to be a collection of thousands of favorites. A number of blockchain media commented that TON is the most anticipated blockchain project in 2019.
It is not surprising that the TON project of the Telegram team is so popular among blockchain people. It is understood that 60% of the worlds ICOs are conducted through Telegram. In addition, Telegrams traffic of 200 million users is also very attractive. Finally, the characteristics of Telegrams point-to-point encrypted transmission are consistent with the characteristics of blockchain technology.
In April 2018, Telegram canceled the public ICO, on the one hand because the expected funds had been raised, and on the other hand to avoid supervision.
However, this still cannot stop the markets enthusiasm for Telegram. It is understood that although the main network of TON has not been launched yet, early investors who participated in private equity have already spawned a prosperous secondary market.
According to a TechCrunch report, a source revealed that a seller is seeking to ship TON at a price of US$1.3. As an early private equity investor, the purchase price is about US$0.37, which is about 3.5 times the income. In the context of the bear market, this rate of return is actually very attractive.
However, because buyers, sellers, and intermediary brokers are involved in the middle, the authenticity of these private placement quotas is actually difficult to verify.
In addition, peoples desire to buy Gram tokens has also led to the birth of a series of Telegram Li Gui websites in the market. A website with the domain name Gramtoken.io and Ton-gram.io once faked the Telegram team and defrauded them of US$5 million and US$30,000, respectively.
According to Coindesks statistics, as of March 2018, there have been at least 9 websites that have fraudulently raised funds in the name of Telegram ICO.
Although these are spontaneous behaviors of the market and have nothing to do with the Telegram team itself, these actions have undoubtedly made the TON project that has not yet been born.
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As hard as Durov, there are times when he is soft
On October 16, two early investors in the Telegram blockchain project told Forbes that the release of TON may be delayed by 6 months to 1 year. Telegram founder Durovs team is confident in resolving all disputes with the US SEC within this period of time.
Although the Telegram team was very stubborn a month ago, under the emergency action of the SEC this time, they had to choose to compromise and retreat.
But as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the Telegram team has few choices, and no matter which choice it makes, it will hit the markets expectations and confidence in the TON project.
Wan Hui, the founding partner of Primitive Ventures, said in the community that the focus and priority of Telegram is not at all in the currency business line. Fundraising is more like a bailout of funds for the Telegram app itself.
Obviously, the original intention of the Telegram team to lay out the blockchain has been questioned. In addition, William Chen, the founder of Lianbit, also posted on Weibo: Dont touch the futures or over-the-counter transactions of this currency. At present, it seems that there is no investment value. It is good that early investors can get back their capital.
It may be difficult for us to guess whether the focus of the Telegram team is on Telegram or TON. However, from an objective point of view, the Telegram team has spent a lot of effort on the TON project. Before the SECs emergency action, TONs advance was very fast.
In August this year, the TON Chinese community announced that the TON core code has been basically completed;
On September 7, TON announced that the main network has entered the final preparation stage before going online;
On September 25, Telegram officially announced the TON programming contest to build smart contracts for the TON platform;
On October 8, Telegram also released the terms of use of the cryptocurrency wallet Grams Wallet. Grams Wallet is not only applicable to the TON network, but will also serve Telegram as an independent product.
In fact, before the release of Grams Wallet, the Telegram team did not disclose its relationship with the TON blockchain. All efforts made by the team are to ensure that TON can be released and operated normally as planned.
However, the situation of Telegram along the way also reminds us that whether it is Telegrams own business or the new TON plan, the Telegram team is facing huge challenges.
In this SEC incident against TON, we can see TON investors everywhere, some of them offer suggestions, and some advocate rights protection. Therefore, even though Durov is as tough as Durov, under the big stick of SEC and involved in many interests, Durov with idealism and rebellious spirit can only give in and push TON under the influence of the trend.
Reference article:
Reference article:
Financing 11.7 billion, but now Telegrams IEO is a big whale shipment? 》by31QU
