The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began litigation with Telegram in October last year. Now there is another round in the confrontation over the issue of the token, and the creator of the popular messenger quite successfully “holds the blow”.
How it all started
The SEC was outraged by the Telegram token sale, during which the company managed to raise $ 1.7 billion. According to the regulator, Gram is a security that was not properly registered. Telegram also did not provide investors with full information about the token, the financial condition of the company itself and its business operations, risk factors and management, as required by law. The statement on the adoption of "emergency measures and restrictions" regarding TON and related companies, the regulator published on his website in October 2019. Just before the launch of the project.
The result of this turn of events was the suspension of TON. Presumably, the launch of the blockchain will take place at the end of April this year. However, in order for this to happen, Telegram needs to settle all issues with the regulator, which will not be easy.
Anger sec
To stop the TON project and prevent the sale of the Gram token in the United States, the Securities Commission has done serious work. Initially, the regulator announced the correspondence between the author of the Telegram project Pavel Durov and investors. After that, he demanded to testify from a former investment adviser of the company, John Hyman, in court.
Just a couple of days later, the SEC published another document in which it disclosed information about the banks that participated in the processing of $ 1.7 billion raised by Telegram. The document also informed who exactly invested in Gram.
Major token purchasers included US investment funds, Lightspeed Ventures' regional arm - Lightspeed China, and FBG Capital.
The document also states that a group of small investors got access to the Gram through a California fund managed by Elysium Ventures. Among those who want to invest in a new token are such celebrities as Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg, Foursquare co-founder Navin Selvadurai, Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, True Ventures partner Om Malik, former TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Bonazos, who runs Dream Machine’s own fund Karma mobile commerce platform founder Lee Linden and Hong Kong billionaire Silas Chow. However, after the material was published by the Coindesk news portal, Navin Selvadurai and Om Malik began to deny everything.
ICO Financial Reporting Court
The next step of the SEC was an attempt to force Telegram to submit financial statements through the court about how it disposed of the $ 1.7 billion raised during the ICO in 2018. The Securities Commission filed a petition at the beginning of the year and, among other things, stated in it that the requested documents are most directly related to the matter: the use of Telegram funds in the development of the TON blockchain and applications that will be integrated with it.
In fact, the Securities Commission demanded that Telegram violate bank secrecy. The SEC requested to indicate the sources of income of investors, according to the AML procedure. This means that everyone who invested in the project must provide sources of funds up to the third sender, as well as each of the sources must show the relevant documents confirming the payment of taxes and the legality of receiving the money.
Cryptoexpert and analyst Boris Grigoryan believes that the actions of the SEC are quite predictable.
“I think the regulator and the regulator are to use the mechanisms for monitoring and assessing the situation,” the expert says.
A similar opinion was expressed by the managing partner at BlockchainLab and the founder of Blockchain Art Hackathon Stanislav Podyachev.
“If you go to the forest to live with bears and stream on Instagram, collecting likes, then do not be surprised if at one point you are devoured. They are bears! This is their normal behavior, ”says the specialist.
Stanislav Podyachev compares the situation with TON Pavel Durov to stay in the den of this bear.
“If you came to the American market and want to use the infrastructure and attract investments, remember that you are not at home, but in the den of the bear. It’s not for nothing that Satoshi hid his identity so carefully, ”the expert shares.
In turn, the representative of DASH in the CIS countries Oleg Karimov believes that the actions of the regulator contradict the concept of cryptocurrencies.
“States and regulators will continue to try to push cryptocurrencies into a framework, and these frameworks violate the conceptual foundations of cryptocurrencies,” says a representative of DASH.
Despite strong pressure from the SEC, Telegram refused to disclose information on the ICO. And this was not impudence on the part of the project founder Pavel Durov, because during the entire conflict with the regulator, he never once allowed himself harsh statements or actions. Obviously, the refusal to provide reporting was a deliberate and balanced decision of the specialists of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which represents the interests of the messenger.
Through the efforts of the same lawyers, a court in the Southern District of New York on January 6 rejected the SEC's request for banking information to sell the Gram token. Despite the fact that the decision is not final, and the regulator still insists on providing data, this is a great achievement of Telegram in the struggle to launch TON.
Future plans
On the day that the court rejected the SEC request, Telegram stated that work on TON was ongoing and the project would be launched. For the first time in the conflict, the company commented on the actions of the regulator and compared the Gram token with the euro. The message refers to the fact that if a person has 100 euros in the safe, this does not mean that he is a shareholder of the European Union. Similarly, with Gram: if someone owns tokens, then this does not automatically make him a shareholder of Telegram or TON.
The company also explained that after the blockchain is finalized, its program code will be opened, and management will be transferred to the hands of the community in order to completely move away from product support and development. In addition, the wallet is not going to be integrated into the messenger, but will develop a separate program for this.
Despite the fact that the company withstood the pressure of the SEC at this stage of the proceedings, the court’s decision to reject the regulator’s request is not final. At the moment, Telegram needs to continue to hold positions and launch TON in the form in which it announced it.
