Privacy-focused messaging app Telegram held its TON blockchain back from launching on April 2021. To make up for it, the firm offered to return up to 72 percent of each token-sale investor.
It first postponed the network’s launch back in October due to a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Telegram allegedly ran an unregistered securities sale, which took $1.7 billion back in 2018.
The company first revised the launch deadline following the lawsuit to April 30, 2020.
Furthermore, the company already lost a court battle against the SEC beforehand. A US judge ruled Telegram can’t launch its blockchain altogether or issue its “gram” tokens until an injunction was dignified.
As an alternative, Telegram also offered to give 110% of their original investments by April 30, 2021. The price was 53% higher than the Termination Amount.
Telegram’s Plans
The messaging giant will continue to discuss the blockchain with “relevant authorities,” or as they claimed. Depending on how these negotiations would go, investors could still receive their cryptocurrency as per the original purchase agreements.
If regulators like SEC would continue to block its launching, the firm plans to pay its debt with equity. The app continues to see 400 million accounts on a monthly basis, so the company believes it will see far more equity than debt resulting from regulation probes for “several times.”
Telegram initially went completely underground following the March 24 ruling. It only emerged in the eleventh hour to communicate with its investors with its return decision.
The firm had already been working on a launch throughout the legal fight with the SEC. It released code for TON blockchain notes and even a technical paper on its consensus protocol and native crypto wallet.
Some investors believe that the deal offered by Telegram was “really good,” which will be a prompt for them to keep their money in the firm.
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