• At this stage the text below is rumours and hearsay.
• This is not official information.
• This text should not be used to make any investment decisions.
• This text is not investment advice.
• Investitin.com staff does not make investment decision on rumours, at this time we do not have a position regarding the Telegram ICO. This may change in the future.

What is Telegram?

Telegram is a privacy focused application with 180,000,000 users. The Telegram FAQ states “making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram.”

The ICO objective is to fund and launch a new block chain called TON – Telegram open network

It aims to be better than other block chains on three fronts:

Speed, Services, Technology. Telegram claims that their design is a block chain 3.0

TON Speed:

• Easily accommodate millions of users and 1000s of decentralised applications.
• Millions of transactions per second unique multi block chain technology
• Smart routing system block chain
• Direct payment challenge milliseconds
• Infinite Sharding paradigm – side chains and cross side chain communications

TON Block chain:

• Inflation of 2%, which will pay for Node services.
• Staking block chain (all coins will be issued at the genesis block)
• Hyper Cube routing, Every block can become its own blockchain
• Size Management: TO block chain will be split if it becomes too big
• Self-healing in order to prevent forks, 2 D ledger which will allow good blocks to override bad ones

TON Masternodes?

• Nodes will be doing essential work, meaning that Telegram will be truly decentralized.
• How much grams will be needed if any to host a telegram masternode?

TON use Cases and their current competitors

ICO structure:

• Token name: Grams
• First gram is $.10c the next one will be 1 billionth more expensive.
• Total supply: 5 billion grams
• Presale: 600 million (1 million minimum)
• ICO main sale: 600 million
• ICO Date: 2018
• 4% inflation per year
• 55% of the tokens will be retrained  by Telegram for stability
• 5 billion tokens will be issued in the ICO

Telegram ICO review:

Interesting

• With 180,000,000 users TON will take cryptocurrencies main stream, it plans to do this by creating a block chain that is the basis for everyday services for the regular non crypto internet user. Telegram claims it has 500k downloads daily, If the Telegram app will host a cryptocurrency wallet it will quickly become the most downloaded crypto wallet.
• TON is a platform for decentralised applications not just a cryptocurrency, this creates an Ecosystem or a platform where value can be recycled internally. Platforms are sticky and users could end up not needing to go out of Telegram for their needs. Consider how many users consider Facebook as “the internet”
• The tokens would make telegram independent form traditional payment platforms.
• Telegram is a company with a history of delivering usable products with a user centric focus, if they wanted to make money they could have introduced adds in the telegram chats or made commercial like features for a fee but they concisely chose not to.
• App Kik a messaging app with 15 million users has raised 35 million in 30 seconds; it will not be a surprise if Telegram’s ICO is as successful.
• Most likely the release of this document is not a coincidence but a carefully orchestrated marketing tactic. If it was otherwise Telegram would have come out already with clarification.
• In 2022, TON will be renamed from “Telegram Open Network” to “The Open Network”
• Given TONs extensive services we could see ICOs being completely run on TON itself

Concerns

• I suspect that this ICO will be more the over hyped ICOs we see today, it will be difficult to get in this ICO.
• Preferred/Special investors (private presale), will get preferential prices in the pre-ico.
• The project has very broad deliverables; however considering the planned 1.2 Billion ICO they will have the resources to create these services. Managing that many developers into a coordinated team is a challenge no matter the budget.
• A Telegram ICO is a high profile target for the regulators, which might impact all the market. However this seems to be on the same scale as EOS.
• TON is creating several end users services itself rather than letting the free market create them.
• TON will challenge many small and large crypto projects on many levels. First of all small time emerging cryptos like Electronuem, will face very tough competition from TON. Other larger cryptos like Bitcoin, Dash and Ethereum will have to compete harder by being better at what they do than TON. TON has the advantge of implementing the lessons learnt at design stage rather than after.
• There have been unverified claims that Telegram security has been compromised, if true then Telegram is of course working to fix this.
• The pricing model of the TON ICO, would have benefited from that of EOS. The EOS ICO benefits from a more transparent price discovery mechanism.
• Around 50% of the tokens will be held back by Telegram, to “stabilize the market”.

Conclusion

TON, if successful become a massive crypto project. It will compete with several crypto big names. It is an advantage for the crypto space as a whole. the more big players join the more legitimacy this space will acquire with non crypto users. However of course the pie is only so big and TON will creep into the market share of other cryptocurrencies. The free market at its best.