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Business News/ Market / Stock-market-news/  Telegram seen successful in boosting cryptocurrency sale to $1.7 billion
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Telegram seen successful in boosting cryptocurrency sale to $1.7 billion

Telegram raised $850 million from large investors last month, selling rights to virtual coins called Grams at $0.38 apiece and the second round is targeting another $850 million at $1.33 apiece this month

Telegram is seeking to build is own blockchain network with Gram built-in, enabling much faster transactions speed than rival networks run for bitcoin and ethereum. Photo: APPremium
Telegram is seeking to build is own blockchain network with Gram built-in, enabling much faster transactions speed than rival networks run for bitcoin and ethereum. Photo: AP

Moscow: Messaging service Telegram Group Inc., which smashed the world record for selling a new cryptocurrency in February, is on track to raise another $850 million as its initial coin offering (ICO) extends toward a third month, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Investors are placing sufficient orders in the second round even after the token was priced at more than triple last month’s level, two of the people said, asking not to be identified as the offer is private. Appetite for crypto-assets has cooled somewhat since market leader bitcoin failed to return to its January highs, they explained.

The comments signal that the ICO is going mostly according to plan for Pavel Durov, the self-exiled Russian entrepreneur who founded the encrypted-chat app with his mathematician brother Nikolai in 2013 and now boasts 200 million users from Iran to Brazil.

The firm, registered in the British Virgin Islands, is finding enough interest among a global pool of investors who have been rocked by a volatile token market and whose sceptics say they doubt the Durovs can meet their goal to speed transactions processing toward a level of Visa or Mastercard.

Telegram raised $850 million from large investors last month, selling rights to virtual coins called Grams at $0.38 apiece, according to a filing. The second round is targeting another $850 million at $1.33 apiece this month, according to the company documents seen by Bloomberg News. Telegram didn’t respond to Bloomberg inquiries seeking comment.

The company is seeking to build is own blockchain network with Gram built-in, enabling much faster transactions speed than rival networks run for bitcoin and ethereum. It’s raising funds to build this network, rent servers, boost the number of users and pay operating expenses, the documents say.

Demand in the ICO’s second round is lower than for the first, and some investors were given extra time to produce the funds, two of the people said. Bloomberg

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Published: 23 Mar 2018, 06:28 PM IST
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