Roman with Durov

The founder of the popular Telegram messenger Pavel Durov presented the US Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the document, the developer of social platforms managed to attract funds from 81 investor to the development of the new Telegram Open Network blockchain platform with his own cryptocurrency.

A total of $ 850 million will receive Telegram Group Inc. and Ton Issuer Inc. Both of them are registered in the British Virgin Islands, the leaders of both are the leaders of Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai.

The full list of investors in the document is not disclosed, but some of the names are known. So, earlier the co -founder of QIWI Sergey Sologin himself said that he invested $ 17 million into the Durov project.

“The company is interesting, developing, their team is good, so I decided to invest. In the next round ICO, I plan to make investments in the amount of up to $ 10 million. I want Telegram to be a Russian company, ”the statement made at the Russian investment forum in Sochi, RBC quotes his statement.

Another $ 10 million in exchange for the project tokens was invested by the co-founder of the VIMM-Bill-Danna David Jacobashvili, which Vedomosti wrote about.

Finally, the third famous and largest investor at the moment is Roman Abramovich, who, according to the publication, was one of the first Russians to whom Durov allowed to invest in the project. He invested, according to some reports, 300 million dollars. This is also reported by Vedomosti with reference to sources familiar with the situation and large participants in the ICO.

The early publication of Financial Times , citing its own sources, wrote that ICO Telegram is ready to participate in such venture investors as Kleiner Perkins Coufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital. Moreover, each of these companies was ready to invest $ 20 million, although the companies themselves did not comment on the information. As, however, many other alleged participants in the transaction.

“The representative of Millhouse (this company runs Abramovich’s assets) John Mann refused to comment. Pavel Durov refused to answer the questions of Vedomosti, sent through his messenger. Telegram did not conduct ICO in the usual sense. Rather, it is a closed placement of securities in ordinary currency - dollars and euros. Investors buy the rights to the internal cryptocurrency of the project, the so -called Grams, but by another agreement: until Ton will be launched, these are just securities that imply participation in the future distribution of tokens, ” the newspaper writes.

One way or another, the ICO of the platform caused unprecedented excitement. Analysts suggested that the Durovs could collect from three to five billion dollars.

“What is stated is just a parallel Internet on the blockchain. This is a full -fledged thing, where you have your own DNS, its own currency. I would rather call this not blockchain 3.0, because it is not yet known what happens and what will not work out from the developers from the declared. But the fact that Telegram is building an internal independent and decentralized Internet is yes, ”explained BFM creator Satoshi.fm, Internet experts Anton Merkurov.

Earlier, Forbes recognized Pavel Durov with a dollar billionaire, estimating his condition at about 1.7 billion and noting that "the growth capabilities have not yet been exhausted."

“The study of the analytical company App Annie gives a more modest picture: Telegram approached 100 million users only in the IV quarter of 2017. Snapchat had as many users when the company was estimated at $ 24 billion during the IPO. However, Snapchat and Telegram have a different audience, so they cannot be compared directly. But even according to the most conservative assessments of Forbes, Telegram costs more than a billion dollars, and its creator Pavel Durov is a dollar billionaire, ” Forbes writes.