The chat app company Telegram filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to say it had raised $850 million from 81 investors before its planned Initial Coin Offering.
It plans to use the money for maintaining the mobile messaging app and developing the Telegram Open Network (TON), which is touted as “a scalable and flexible Blockchain architecture that consists of a master chain and up to 292 accompanying Blockchains” that promise to be able to handle millions of transactions per second, Forexlive reported.
The company has touted a grab-bag of services it hopes to build around the token including, distributed file storage akin to services like Dropcoin and ICO company Filecoin, a proxy service for creating decentralized VPN services and TOR-like secure browsing environments based on the blockchain, services for decentralized apps, smart contracts and decentralized web browsing experiences, and payments for micropayments and peer-to-peer transactions.
Fundraising plans for Telegram have continued to skyrocket.
This pre-sale to investors already dwarfs the $257 million raised by Filecoin.
The ICO planned for March was originally hoping to raise $600 million but Bloomberg reported that could rise to $1.15 billion, or beyond.
The company is a perfect storm because its app is successful and widely used in the crypto community.
Telegram needs to be watched very closely as it will be a major barometer of the entire crypto space.
