How A Group Of Russian Engineers Revived Telegram’s Blockchain

[Alex077 16064]

             

As cryptocurrency markets continue to remain uncertain this summer, following China’s official ban on financial institutions from providing cryptocurrencies services, and upcoming FATF (Financial Action Task Force) recommendations, retail investors are reminded that the biggest hurdle to mainstream cryptocurrency adoption continues to be the global regulatory climate.

In 2018, widespread cryptocurrency payments seemed within reach, as Pavel Durov sought to bring instant payments to 500 million active Telegram users, enabling instantaneous and affordable peer-to-peer global transactions. The project was to facilitate transactions through the ‘gram’ token on the Telegram Open Network (TON).

 

The dream ended when the SEC sued Telegram for an unlawful token issuance and filed for an emergency action halting Telegram from “selling or otherwise distributing” tokens within the United States. By 2020, the case escalated and Telegram was required to pay a $18.5 million civil settlement and pledge to return more than $1.2 billion invested into its token sale.

Speculations ensued as to why the SEC pursued Telegram and its associated TON blockchain offering so harshly, particularly when other private token offerings such as EOS were allowed to continue to operate after paying a fine. Investors received some clarity when Mark Zuckerberg was forced to appear in front of the U.S. Senate Financial Committee to defend Facebook’s Libra blockchain. Similarly to Telegram, Facebook was too building instant crypto payments into its messenger apps, promising to deliver a new cryptocurrency into the hands of 1.8 billion users. It became clear that in the battle of Wall Street versus Big Tech, the U.S. government was unwilling to give up monetary sovereignty. By creating its own token, any messenger app with a sizable user base could undermine the U.S. Dollar as the default medium of exchange. 

 

Read more....

Edited July 30, 2021 by Alex077