How much GRAM costs: the future cryptocurrency Durov was estimated at almost $ 30 billion

The total cost of the future cryptocurrency Telegram by the end of 2019 may amount to $ 29.5 billion, The Bell found out. Such a forecast with many reservations was given by a native of Qiwi Hash Crypto Investment Bank. Telegram could provide the same assessment to its investors.

Illustration from Ton Whitepaper

Read more. Assessment of the initial emission of GRAM tokens on the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain platform is contained in the Hash Crypto Investment Bank report dated October 2018. In it, the target value of Durov’s cryptocurrency by the end of 2019 is estimated at $ 5.9 per GRAM, the Bell told The Bell a source close to the company (this assessment with reference to the same report was filed in November Kommersant). At a price of $ 5.9 for GRAM, the capitalization of all Cryptocurrency Durov should be $ 29.5 billion, counted The Bell.

GRAM at $ 5.9 Telegram could represent its investors - at least it is indicated as the target price (Target Price) in one of the latest notes for investors that The Bell provided the @TGRAM channel, closely following Ton news. But the Bell failed to confirm with investors of the new project Durov that they are familiar with this assessment.

Where did such an assessment come from?

Gram rating at $ 5.9 is rather speculative. One of the authors of the report, senior Hash Cib analyst Rustam Botashev, in the post on Medium, explaining the assessment methodology, is recognized that no one in the world knows how to evaluate cryptocurrencies.
Hash CIB offers its own assessment methodology, emphasizing that the value that obtained in their model is not a target or fair price. Rather, it is a “rational network value”, consisting of current and discounted added value over future years. But in a note for investors $ 5.9 for token is called the target price.

Hash Cib was created by the QIWI investment director by the Yakov Barinsky. One of the co-owners of QIWI, Sergey Solonin, already in the first round of Pre-ICO Telegram invested in the development of the Ton blockchain platform $ 17 million.

“Our report was not a proposal or recommendation for investors. It was intended for qualified investors who have already invested in Telegram or were interested in this, ”explained The Bell Barinsky. He denies any connection between Qiwi and Hash Cib. “I work in the QIWI group, but Hash is not connected with it, it is an absolutely independent company,” he says. - I am its founder and leader. Our staff has nothing to do with QIWI. ” Research is one of the main areas of Hash Cib. “The independence of judgments is our key principle. So we certainly did not set ourselves the task of overestimation of an assessment of 1 Gram, ”says Barinsky. The report has been prepared since the spring of 2018 and was based on the first Whitepaper to appear on the network. After the TestNET launch of the Telegram blockchain platform, which is expected in the first quarter of this year, Hash Cib will conduct tests and release the update on the basis of actual data, he promises. After that, the assessment of 1 GRAM may change.

How did we think?

The currency of Telegram, Gram, initially had to be divided into three parts: 52% - is reserved, 4% - gets to developers, 44% is sold to investors.

The first GRAM costs 10 cents, each next GRAM for a billionth share is more expensive than the previous one. In total, 5 billion grams will be released on the main network (all this was described in Ton Whitepaper - the avenue to the ICO, which dates from December 2017 and was released in January 2018).
According to SEC, $ 1.7 billion was attracted from investors during two closed rounds of ICO. In total, according to the Hash CIB report, 2.89 billion GRAM was sold, that is, one token cost about 59 cents (in the first round $ 0.38, in the second - $ 1.33).
It turns out that $ 1.7 billion received from investors correspond to about $ 2.94 billion for the entire Telegram cryptocurrency.
The target price of $ 5.9 of Gram means an increase in the cost of cryptocurrency by the end of 2019 almost exactly ten times.

The founder of Telegram Pavel Durov and the vice president of the company Ilya Perekopsky did not answer the questions of The Bell.

Telegram in numbers

The Telegram budget in 2017 amounted to $ 70 million to the ICO for 2018 it was planned to allocate $ 100 million, for 2019-$ 130 million, for 2020-$ 170 million.
The monthly audience of Telegram in 2018 was supposed to amount to 200 million (the messenger reached this mark in March). Further growth in years - 300 million, 450 million and 675 million.
In October 2017, at least 500 thousand users were connected to Telegram daily.
The key audit goal of Telegram is a billion users by January 1, 2022.
Telegram was going to raise $ 1.2 billion to ICO and distribute them in a ratio of 80:20. Most would go to equipment, traffic and user verification. Smaller - for administrative expenses and salaries.
In fact, for two closed rounds, $ 1.7 billion from more than a hundred investors were raised.

What about the project?

If by October 2019 Durov does not launch a blockchain platform, under the terms of the ICO, he must return the money to the investors. As we already wrote , Telegram was going to launch cryptocurrency in March - although the deadlines can still move again.
Within a month, Durov planned to hold a meeting with the largest investors projects, at the end of January a source familiar with the plans of the founders said at the end of January. So far, nothing is known about her. One of the investors of the project said that Durov was in Davos when the economic forum was held there, but he also did not know anything about the presentation.

Where will the cryptocurrency be launched?

In addition to launching the blockchain platform, Telegram must be launched somewhere in cryptocurrency and it is critical to build an audience. All three main world messengers are included in the club of applications with a billionth audience. There are only a few attractive territories for a small project where exotic messengers dominate. Indonesia use BlackBerry Messenger, in Korea - Kakaotalk, in Vietnam - Zalo. Over 400 million people live in these three countries. A quarter of this market in theory can give Telegram an additional 100 million users necessary to fulfill the plan for 2019.
The market of Japan is a mansion, where the main messenger is similar to Telegram. The largest messenger of Japan is Line. He, like Telegram, has about 200 million users who are concentrated in two countries (78 million in Japan and 32 million in Thailand). Like Telegram, Line decided to launch Link's own cryptocurrency.
Japan is a very attractive market also because the local financial regulator issued the right to self -regulation the crypto industry. This is one of the softest markets in relation to crypto platforms.
In a letter to investors, the creators of Telegram list the countries where they are negotiating with crypto -streaks, in this order: Japan, China and Great Britain. The document said that the Gram appeal will begin in Asia, and it is Japan that will most likely become the first country where trade starts.

What is Telegram going to earn on?

Having sold tokens, Telegram offers them to spend on platform services. Among the services:

storage of data in a decentralized network;
DNS for access to these data;
proxy servers and anonymizers;
payments;
Decentralized applications of all types and sizes.

All this can be paid, free, to work on a hybrid or advertising model, as well as charging commission from payments. The withdrawal of funds will ensure crypto -tires of the region where GRAM will start.

Alexander Ambzin, Irina Pankratova