Telegram $500 Million Funding To Be The Biggest Pre-ICO Ever!

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Telegram, the famous private instant messaging app is now contemplating the biggest Pre-ICO in history to fund its current Blockchain platform and cryptocurrency. As TechCrunch reports today quoting multiple sources, Telegram is aiming to raise up to $500 mln in private sales. Its anticipated Telegram Open Network (TON) would do the tokens for internal user payments. TON was incipiently reported in December, the scale of the endeavour only now becoming apparent.

According to sources:

A series of private presales alone would raise as much as $500 million while the subsequent public distribution phase is planned to drive the value of the token to between $3 to $5 billion.

This would make Telegram’s ICO easily the largest ever to have launched, dwarfing Block. One’s $700 million offering last month.

Top-tier institutional investment firms have expressed interest, but Durov is said to be wary of accepting their cash.

-the publication in question reports.

The Telegram has faced contention in recent months, particularly in Russia after it denied to hand over user data to authorities in line with privacy laws. A potential launch for the Telegram wallet has been set at Q4 this year, with the full package of services following in 2019.

Telegram is understood to be considering raising as much as $500 million in the pre-ICO sale at a potential total token value in the range of $3 billion to $5 billion.

However, those figures could change before the ICO, which could come as soon as March. Those figures would make it possibly the biggest private crypto raise to date after Tezos, which raised over $230 million in July.

With TON, Telegram points to increase cryptocurrency-based utility kindred to WeChat, which has flowered into much more than a chat app and acts as default payment mechanism for several in China.

While payments can be made very quickly in WeChat for a variety of services, a decentralized platform such as TON could contribute more security and resilience.

Sources say:

Telegram plans to allow users to hold both Telegram’s currency and fiat currency in a forthcoming wallet.

There’s also the actual developer ecosystem Telegram has raised up around it, where bots and services are extended by third-party developers. Again, here TON could, in theory, underly everything a developer causes to Telegram.