The company Telegram Group Inc. refused to hold a public ICO (initial coin offering), according to The Wall Street Journal with a link to an informative source.

The ICO of Telegram collected so many funds during the two conducted stages that it eliminates the need for an open stage. The project was received investments from about 200 investors in the amount of $ 1.7 billion over the period from January to March, which made this ICO the largest one ever, The Wall Street Journal informs.

At the same time, another source received information that the refusal from the public stage of ICO was related to the policy of conducting initial token sales, which became much stricter than the one that was operating at the time of planning to raise funds.

Telegram does not comment on its rejection of the third stage of ICO.

The information that the companies TON Issuer and Telegram Group, managed by the brothers Pavel and Nikolay Durov, managed to collect 1.7 billion dollars during the two stages of ICO came from the "Vedomosti" . The same edition also reported that Roman Abramovich was among the investors and invested about $300 million into the project. The third stage of the public ICO was scheduled for March, RBC reported citing sources.

All the funds collected during the completed stages of the ICO are most likely to be transferred to the creation of the TON platform on blockchain with Gram cryptocurrency, the document is addressed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In mid-April, the Russian court decided to block the messenger Telegram , as its representatives refused to transfer the encryption keys giving access to the correspondence of all users. We remind you that more than 14 million Russians use Telegram.

Iran followed the example of Russia and banned Telegram on its territory at the end of April. Telegram has about 40 million users in Iran. In total, more than 200 million people around the world use Telegram as of March.