Telegram messenger reaps $1.7 billion in presale of its own cryptocoin

Telegram is a cloud-based secure messaging service. In February it launched a presale of its cryptocurrency that raised a total of $850 million from 81 different investors.

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Later, in a second sale Telegram raised another $850 million bringing the total amount raised to $1.7 billion,. These sales are prior to an initial coin offering (ICO). The Telegram said that it might pursue more subsequent offerings yet.

Telegram is planning to launch the Telegram Open Network(TON) an ecosystem including apps, services, and a store for digital and physical goods. It plans to use the money raised by the ICO to fund this development.

The Telegram messenger service

Telegram is a cloud-based secure instant messaging service. The Telegram apps are available for Windows Phone, Android, iOS, Windows NT, macOS, and Linux as well. Users are able to send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files of any type.

The firm claims it does not seek a profit but it has already raised the $1.7 billion before the planned initial coin offering.

The firm was founded by Russian Pavel Durov . Although its client-side code is open-source software, the server-side code is closed-source and proprietary. Telegram also provides Application Program Interfaces (APIs) to independent developers.

In March of this year, Telegram stated that it had 200 million monthly active users. The CEO said in April 2017 that the service had seen a more than 50 percent growth rate.

Gram

Gram is the name of the currency that will help build the TON net work. The Gram website describes the coin in glowing terms:

"We present GRAM, the representative cryptocurrency of the TON Blockchain. 200 millions of Telegram users will get a TON wallet making it the world’s most adopted cryptocurrency, it will easily accommodate millions of users and thousands of decentralized applications, to provide direct payment channels to transfer value in milliseconds. "

The Telegram messenger service can be downloaded here for desktops. The site also has links to download for other devices.

The Telegram service website is here. It is free.

Chats are not encrypted by default so you have to turn on the encryption for more security. There are critics of the encryption as exhibited in this article.

Previously published in Digital Journal