Investors are rushing to invest in Telegram’s ICO (initial coin offering) dubbed as Telegram Open Network (TON) since it was announced earlier this year. As of now, TON has raised another staggering $850 million in a second round pre-sale event that started on March 14th this year. This makes the total funding raised in ICO equal to $1.7 billion even before the public is allowed to participate.
According to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), founder of the Russian messaging app, Pavel Durov has reported that the ICO has successfully attracted 94 different investors to help raise another amount of $850 million, as reported by CoinTelegraph.
The world biggest ICO yet has been the talk of the industry, since it achieved the remarkable feat of raising a similar $850 million in the first round of the pre-sale event. Previously raised number involved funding from some 81 investors, and identities of investors have not been disclosed. Where a third round may bring the total to $2.55 billion, the speculation has the final figure of funds raised at around $4 Billion.
TON is said to be the next generation blockchain platform with enhanced applications. The earlier two generations can be considered as Bitcoin and Ethereum which laid the foundation of the blockchain system and paved the way forward for new platforms to explore more through this technology.
Experts say that TON will be capable of a superior number of transactions, around 1 million per second. It will also manage storage of ID, payments and smart contracts.
Meanwhile, Telegram is still banned in many countries including Pakistan. Telegram is under threat of being blocked in its origin country Russia as well after it refused to provide encryption keys to the Federal Security Service to comply with legislation on fighting terrorism.
