The telegram has successfully reached their pre-sale ICO target of $850 million. The sale was held for private contributors. Telegram is created by Durov and Nikolai, who fled Russia in 2014 due to conflicts between them and VKontakte investors. However, they didn’t stop there and create Telegram which is one of the best messaging apps out there.
The information came to know when SEC received a document which contained the report of the raised capital. It is mentioned in the document that the money is raised for the development of the TON Blockchain. It is signed by Pavel Durov, the Telegram’s CEO.
The Telegram ICO is not complete, and there can be public ICO for TON later on. At the current moment, the private sale is held for venture capital firms and other key investors in the market. It is common to see huge discounts on the pre-sale to lure the big investors. According to Bloomberg report, the initial sale target was set to only $600 million. However, it changed to $850 million in huge demand at even the pre-sale ICO stage.
The public sale date is not announced. However, it is expected, they will try to raise close to $1.15 billion. If this happens, the whole ICO will raise a total of $2 billion making it the biggest ICO till date.
The telegram has always enjoyed the favor of the cryptocurrency market, thanks to its unique way of providing community tools for other ICOs.
So, what exactly the TON blockchain achieve to do? They are trying to build a service like Dropcoin. It will be used to create decentralized VPN services which are similar to TOR browsing. Services will also be run on the blockchain which will support decentralized apps, browsing, and smart contracts. Moreover, it will also offer peer-to-peer transactions and micropayment.
According to the whitepaper, Telegram aims to release TON in Q2 2018.