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Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

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Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#21

Post by arthurcolle »

panarky wrote: post #14
firasd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they will use the tokens in the app for payments and a way to run decentralized applications (so paying for computation, storage, etc.) What's being sold is the potential for the token price to appreciate in value. It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold.

> It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold. If you pay $100,000 for 100 shares of Google I guess you're technically getting equity, but what exactly is the advantage of that? Sure, your broker has a digital ledger that records your ownership, but is that fundamentally different from digital entries in any other ledger just because there's equity? Whether you buy Google s…

None of these dapps have implemented or demonstrably plan to implement any systems that require the use of these tokens in a way thats compelling. who cares if youre goldcoins on flavorville are on a blockchain? its such a trivial and incredibly boring use of the infra. I’m actively working in this space on open financial instruments, a common standard and “designer software” to model and test contracts before they get issued and broadcasted by market participants. also needed is a formal specification for contract formation that doesnt cripple rapid prototyping by quant devs or enterprise companies. Mass-market adoption of arbitrarily complex financial products is tricky and could be fraught with problems and dangerous classes of errors, which makes the need for the new instrument types to be interoperable across wallets and exchange venues, while also being editable and more easily deployable is critical to be aware. While displacing intermediaries structurally due to the extinction of prior trusted models, its important to understand that these tokens basically do represent ewuity ownership and calling them in app currency is not a reasonable “trick” to get around securities legislation

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#22

Post by arthurcolle »

ttul wrote: post #3

There’s definitely zero hype left in Blockchain.

crypto/blockchain is significant and has broad implications for how human social structures cooperate on a global scale. consider everything you do on a daily basis and think about transactions and interactions you have with others - all of them

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#23

Post by rorykoehler »

panarky wrote: post #20
firefoxd wrote: post #4

Maybe I'm the last to join the party but if i understand correctly, is this money they are going to receive as investment? I ask because as much as i can google I can't find any product they are selling or any ad they are displaying, so what is being bought here? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, is there something i am missing?

There's no product yet, they're selling the tokens that will be used in future products. When we finally find use cases that make cryptoassets relevant to regular people for routine activities, then the skeptics will understand that there's more going on here than just tulips and Ponzis. Telegram has real potential to do that, it just takes some imagination to see what it could be.

They way you describe it makes it sound like you're giving free money to vapourware. Telegrams ideas around tokens could be useless and lead to the tokens being valueless. At a minimum we should expect a clear product roadmap from them.

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#24

Post by SXX »

jstanley wrote: post #13
ktta wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. I hope they don't do the same thing with their code for whatever they're making.

What do you mean by "it is"? The Telegram client is open source.

In this case "private" have nothing to do with the code license. Problem with Telegram is that protocol and cryptography they use is their own. They might use better reviewed protocol like one of Signal, but they didn't.

No need to explain what dangers same strategy going to cause with cryptocurrencies.

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#25

Post by jjeaff »

ggg9990 wrote: post #19
panarky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold. If you pay $100,000 for 100 shares of Google I guess you're technically getting equity, but what exactly is the advantage of that? Sure, your broker has a digital ledger that records your ownership, but is that fundamentally different from digital entries in any other ledger just because there's equity? Whether you buy Google s…

The U.S. government has a set of laws that govern what “shares” in a US-listed company mean. If Google’s management tries to completely nullify what equity ownership means, the US government will go and take it back. They will freeze the founders assets. They will ground the company aircraft. They will send scary men with big guns to make arrests of people indicted by a grand jury. Those things are pretty hard to get…

IRS, FTC, or SEC raids?

Fraud is fraud whether it is in equity shares or ico magic money. Granted, equities are much better monitored and regulated, but if they steal from investors through the ico, they will likely face similar enforcement.

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#26

Post by jjeaff »

panarky wrote: post #14
firasd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they will use the tokens in the app for payments and a way to run decentralized applications (so paying for computation, storage, etc.) What's being sold is the potential for the token price to appreciate in value. It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold.

> It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold. If you pay $100,000 for 100 shares of Google I guess you're technically getting equity, but what exactly is the advantage of that? Sure, your broker has a digital ledger that records your ownership, but is that fundamentally different from digital entries in any other ledger just because there's equity? Whether you buy Google s…

If I own shares of Google, there are two methods of earning money. Appreciating of the stock or dividend payments for my share of profits.

ICO only offers me the speculation part.

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#27

Post by mrb »

firefoxd wrote: post #4

Maybe I'm the last to join the party but if i understand correctly, is this money they are going to receive as investment? I ask because as much as i can google I can't find any product they are selling or any ad they are displaying, so what is being bought here? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, is there something i am missing?

Per the SEC filing, yes, they are receiving the $850M as cash from private investors (mostly VCs).

The "product" they are selling is tokens for their ecosystem, described in this leaked whitepaper: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oaKoJDWvhtlvtQEuqxgfkUHcI5...

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#28

Post by dmoy »

jjeaff wrote: post #26
panarky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold. If you pay $100,000 for 100 shares of Google I guess you're technically getting equity, but what exactly is the advantage of that? Sure, your broker has a digital ledger that records your ownership, but is that fundamentally different from digital entries in any other ledger just because there's equity? Whether you buy Google s…

If I own shares of Google, there are two methods of earning money. Appreciating of the stock or dividend payments for my share of profits. ICO only offers me the speculation part.

GP may have selected GOOG because it does not pay a dividend (like BRK.A).

Re: Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO

#30

Post by nudpiedo »

firefoxd wrote: post #4

Maybe I'm the last to join the party but if i understand correctly, is this money they are going to receive as investment? I ask because as much as i can google I can't find any product they are selling or any ad they are displaying, so what is being bought here? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, is there something i am missing?

I think the strategy is getting in a central position in people's communication; they also have a huge user base; perhaps that doesn't justify 850M but those are some things to look at.

Wherever someone has this big influence and strategic position, they will have big chances to leverage them and make such investment worth (especially if the founder has a proven business-runned mind).

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