A document submitted to the SEC earlier this week states that the money was raised “for the development of the TON Blockchain, the development and maintenance of Telegram Messenger and the other purposes.” The security is described as “purchase agreements for cryptocurrency” and the filing is signed by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
This initial sum is most likely the pre-sale stage of the ICO which, as TechCrunch reported on extensively last month, was targeted at venture capital firms and top figures in the investment community who were given deep discounts to buy Telegram’s Gram token. The pre-sale was originally targeted at raising $600 million, but demand pushed the figure up to $850 million, according to a Bloomberg report.
Telegram initially planned to raise a further $600 million to develop its TON project via a public sale that starts in March, according to documents seen by TechCrunch, but it remains to be seen whether that figure will be adjusted. Bloomberg previously suggested the public sale component would expand to $1.15 billion, bringing the total raised to nearly $2 billion if successful.
Telegram CEO Durov did not reply to an emailed request for comment at the time of writing.
Either way, the sale promises to be the largest ICO seen to date. The pre-sale figure alone tops all other ICOs held by some margin.
The sale represents the first outside investment in Telegram, which has been self-funded by Durov and his older brother Nikolai, who founded VKontakte, the social networking site often referred to as ‘Russia’s Facebook.’ The duo fled Russia in 2014 after a fall-out with investors, who they claim had links to the government, and they later set up Telegram.
Demand around the token sale has been unprecedented, primarily because of Telegram’s unique position within the crypto community. Its messaging app is used by the majority of ICO projects, with its group feature particularly popular among crypto watchers — that includes more shady elements such as ‘pump and dump’ scammers.
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