Telegram plans ICO, its own blockchain platform and currency

News from the founder of Messenger App Telegram , who was also responsible for the social network Vkontakte. Pawel Durow had already tried in 2010 to establish his own payment system on vk.com, which failed, however. One of his coworkers chatted out now that Durow wants to monetisieren his project now with more modern means.

Pawel Durow founded together with his brother Nikolai in 2006 the largest social network in Russia. In VKontakte.ru over 90 million people are registered to communicate there in 81 languages together. Anton Rosenberg used to work as a CTO at VKontakte and is currently working for the Messenger service Telegram, which claims to have over 180 million active users. Rosenberg believes Durow love hypes and see the financing of his messenger as a real challenge, especially since there according to their own specifications, any advertising is prohibited. An ICO -Financing however, would be a way to operate the popular Messenger service permanently, and making this money.

The new rumorssay, the Russian IT investor now plans to publish its own cryptocurrency at Telegram. The names Gram and DurowCoin are said to have fallen. The new cryptocurrency is to be embedded in its own blockchain platform, which should enable extremely fast transfers. The project is called Telegram Open Network (TON) and should build on the popularity of the software. In 2010 there were first attempts to establish its own payment service at VKontakte including the currency "Rubel VC", which failed. Less than 1% of VKontakte users were willing to use this new service. But that's not what vk.com is all about. For Facebook, too, the private nature of the network is clearly in the foreground for many users, which makes it difficult to trade in goods via the Facebook Marketplace.The operating company of Mail.ru took over the social network , which is by far the most popular in Russia. It invested 1.13 billion euros and already owned half of the shares. Rumors say that Putin has put massive pressure on the former operators of VKontakte because of the lack of cooperation. Durov had always refused to submit his users' data to the Russian government. In the end he lost the takeover battle against the Internet giant Mail.ru.

Anton Rosenberg believes that a separate cryptocurrency can play a particularly important role in Iran and Uzbekistan, for example, because there are many telegram users living there and the application of domestic currencies is fraught with enormous problems. In secret chat between two people, the communication is carried out encrypted end-to-end, which should make it impossible for government agencies any monitoring. According to the media, communication via telegram in Iran accounts for around 40% of Internet traffic. There, Durov was convicted for allegedly supporting terrorism in absentia. His current project should not be sold at any time, because he cares about the privacy of its users too much, so Durow. Even for $ 20 billion, he would not sell Telegram lifetime.

An official confirmation including a timetable is pending, so far there is only the video about the future plans of the company (see below). One thing is certain: Durow has always been very positive about Bitcoin. He invested in it when Bitcoin was $ 750 apiece, and sees this cryptocurrency as " digital gold ." Even though Nikolai and Pavel Durov were royally rewarded for the acquisition of VKontakte, the costs of Telegram are not borne by themselves. Therefore, logically integrating your own coin into the messenger and collecting funds for the development of the blockchain platform in advance via ICO sounds logical.