ICO isn’t needed after raising $1.8 billion in private funds
Telegram Group Inc. announced that it is ending plans for public fund raising since it has raised so much money from private investment. Originally the startup messaging service created by Russian brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov planned to launch their public ICO for the gram coin in order to fund their Telegram Open Network (TON) but since they took in almost $2 billion in two rounds of private funding the ICO has been scrapped.
As was reported in the Wall Street Journal Telegram’s initial plans were to raise $1.2 billion dollars to build their TON network evenly split between private and public rounds of fundraising. After it raised a reported $850 million in its first round of private investment in February and then matched that number in another private round in March they decided to cancel the public funding round.
An unnamed source told the WSJ that it was because the regulatory environment had changed over that time period. That is the SEC has begun to focus on ICO’s which in this case could bring scrutiny onto company executives. Private fundraising isn’t subject to the same rigorous examination as a public round would be.
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