Telegram tries to appease the SEC – no Gram tokens in Messenger

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/01/11/telegram-tries-to-appease-the-sec-no-grams-in-messenger/

by davidgerard • 7 years ago

29 21 7 years ago

davidgerard.co.uk

The main thing I find amazing about the whole Telegram Gram debacle is the magnitude of money they were able to raise. $1.7 billion is just a ridiculous amount of money. Think about how much good that money could have produced if it were invested into useful companies and startups.

pavlov• 7 years ago

I recall reading that most of the money came from Russian sources close to oligarchs. So at least it’s not out of the pocket of retail investors unlike some other blockchain scams. OneCoin seems particularly egregious in this regard: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50435014

davidgerard3• 7 years ago

[OP here] no, quite a lot came from American VC firms who wanted "crypto exposure" in late 2017.

Funnily enough, actual crypto VCs thought Grams were nonsense and stayed the hell away.

So in the US at least, Telegram skinned only and precisely the most deserving suckers!

The Russian investors were who I was thinking of with "a robust response to perceived shenanigans." Messing them around is likely unwise, no matter what the sales agreement says.

redwood• 7 years ago

What does this mean for holders of the illiquid grams?

davidgerard3• 7 years ago

The SEC's case says "refund the investors." The money may have been spent, however. (That's what the last para, about bank records, is about.)

nikivi• 7 years ago

I honestly feel dirty sending media or any kind of files with Telegram. There is no clear business plan setup.

WhatsApp mines metadata/contacts and uses it for ad profiling. Telegram runs on saving. But that can’t scale to the future.

I do hope that whatever this coin is, it success because Telegram is decades ahead in terms of UX/speed than any other messenger.

giancarlostoro3• 7 years ago

Except does it even have reasonable end to end encryption?

otachack• 7 years ago

What I hear from others if that it isn't up to par with encryption standards that Signal and WhatsApp use since Telegram rolls their own. Also, you have to explicitly start a e2e chat with a given person, otherwise it's through, and stored in, Telegram servers.

webboynews• 7 years ago

No if you believe vague handwaving.

Yes if you see they have an open bounty

mcrae• 7 years ago

because Telegram is decades ahead in terms of UX/speed than any other messenger

I'm curious in what ways you feel Telegram so far ('decades') ahead of others? Honestly in my experience Telegram / WhatsApp / Messenger / Line / Kakao / WeChat (outside China) are all at feature parity

skrowl• 7 years ago

Use Telegram on your phone, tablet, and 2 computers

Now do that same thing with Signal

It's night and day how much better Telegram works when you have multiple devices

seibelj• 7 years ago

Still not sure why Telegram cares about the SEC? Russian owners and offshore company, what leverage do US regulators have?

lawtalkinghuman• 7 years ago

Presumably because if they're not strictly kosher under US law, USD exchanges like Coinbase that try to stay in the good books of the US authorities won't want to touch Telegram's tokens for risk of legal action.

It'd be pretty bad PR for Telegram as a company if the only way to buy their tokens was off shady unregulated exchanges.

davidgerard3• 7 years ago

They want to be able to spend money in the first-world financial system. They touch the US. A US monetary judgement is widely enforceable. The idea that Telegram can just go "US lol" is not the case.

Telegram tries to appease the SEC – no Gram tokens in Messenger

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