The founder of the Telegram messenger, Pavel Durov, together with his brother Nikolai, informed the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about the attracted $ 850 million from the 81 investor.
Link to published Commission documents.
Who is the owner
Two companies appear in the documents - Telegram Group Inc and TON Issuer Inc, which are managed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov. The submitted documents were personally signed by Pavel Durov as the director of both companies.
From the report it follows that the first investor payments were received on 29 on January 2018. Attracted $ 850 million will not be spent on reward brothers Durov. The money is needed for the development of the Telegram Open Network (TON) and the maintenance of the Telegram messenger.
In fact, Telegram had not exactly ICO, but a closed placement of securities in dollars and euros. Investors bought the rights to the cryptocurrency of the project, before the launch of which they received securities implying participation in the future distribution of tokens.
Placement of securities in the form “D”
The document filed with the SEC is a Form “D” offering information that is used for a “Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities.” This form is used by small companies to attract venture capital investments.
Who invested in Telegram
The documents filed with the SEC do not disclose the names of the investors. However, recently it became known that Qiwi co-founder Sergey Solonin and Wimm-Bill-Dann co-founder David Yakobashvili invested in the project. According to them, they invested $17 and 10 million respectively in Telegram.
At the same time, Solonin and Yakobashvili said that they wanted to invest more, but Pavel Durov did not allow this to be done.
In addition, it was reported that Roman Abramovich became one of the largest investors and invested $ 300 million, but there is no confirmation yet.
Rumors have become reality
Rumors that the Telegram team is working on TON have been going since the end of 2017. The collection of applications for pre-ICO was completed in January, when Durov received proposals from investors in the amount of $ 3,8 billion.
In March of this year, the public stage of the ICO is expected, during which Telegram plans to attract another $ 1,2 billion.
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