Telegram ICO Sets New Record At $1.6 Billion

Telegram is officially the first multibillion-dollar token. A new record has been achieved, after the ICO just concluded $850 million in its presale.

The encrypted messaging app created by the Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov has already sent the investors an email to inform them that the firm will hold a second private presale. According to The Verge, the second round of the Telegram ICO presale is expected to raise even more money which will net more than $1.6 billion before the ICO opens to the public.

Even though Telegram doesn’t have any troubles when it comes to attracting capital to its token sale, there are still challenges remaining on the sidelines. One of them is Pantera Capital, a company founded in 2013 describing itself as the ‘first US Bitcoin investment firm’ – and a company that declined to participate in the Telegram ICO only because of the “lack of transparency” as cited by them.

“It’s very important in blockchain technology and specifically cryptocurrencies that you be very open with what you’re trying to do and have as many people as possible looking at it to see if they can find a flaw,” said Charles Noyes, a quantitative analyst at Pantera. “When you operate the way they do, which is closed, with secrecy, not subjecting yourself to peer review, you basically open yourself up to the possibility that there is a trivial bug in it that destroys the network.”

Many other investment firms have expressed concerns about the different figures that Telegram has given. They also discussed how much the company intends to raise through the ICO which is far different from most projects. The second round of the presale confirmed that.

Currently, the developers are skeptical about Telegram’s ability to achieve the goals that it laid out for the Telegram Open Network (TON) that include the claim that the network will possess 1 million transactions per second.