We recently reported on Telegram’s staggering ICO. Hitting $500 million, it’s was already destined for the record books as the biggest ICO pre-sale of all-time, but new figures show that it’s now becoming even bigger. Telegram has reportedly filed Form D with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission, claiming that it’s now sold more than $850 million of the commodity. Figures such as this shouldn’t be taken lightly, as it shows that Telegram has the potential to break new ground, setting the benchmark for all ICOs to follow.
Running via a private sale up until now, Telegram is also pushing forward with a public ICO, which could generate up to $1.15 billion in additional funding. What’s helping the Telegram ICO reach such astronomical heights is the fact that prominent investors and venture capital firms are being given access to discounted TON tokens during the pre-sale. This had led to a huge uptake, with Telegram’s ICO generating a huge wave of momentum in the process. This momentum will only be furthered by the public ICO should it go ahead in March.
The $850 million figure currently raised actually represents more than what was raised by the three biggest crypto ICOs to date combined – EOS, Tezos, and Filecoin.
The Telegram ICO is set to be a game-changing event in the cryptocurrency sphere. Dwarfing any and every ICO that has come before, Telegram’s venture into the Blockchain space represents something huge. The $850 million figure currently raised actually represents more than what was raised by the three biggest crypto ICOs to date combined – EOS, Tezos, and Filecoin. Telegram has outlined how it plans to use the proceeds of the ICO, stating “…the development of the TON Blockchain, the development and maintenance of Telegram Messenger and the other purposes described in the offering materials”.
Yes, the Telegram ICO has been met with some degree of controversy, with Forbes going as far to call it a “scam”. But, this doesn’t take away from the fact that Telegram has brought a pretty impressive whitepaper to the table. What TON represents is a platform for decentralized services, with it designed to compete toe-to-toe with the likes of Ethereum. Set to offer features related to decentralized VPN services, distributed file storage (in a similar vein to Storj and Filecoin), micropayments, DApps, and more, it’s safe to say that TON has the potential to impact the crypto market in a major way moving forward.
