The creators of Telegram Pavel and Nikolai Durov filed an "Offer Notice" exempt from securities "with the US Securities Commission (SEC) February 13, yielding $ 850 million raised under rule 506 (c) of the SEC exemption of 81 investors for " the development of the TON Blockchain, the development and maintenance of Telegram Messenger. "

The type of securities offered in the SEC deposit are described as "Purchase Contracts for Cryptocurrency" and are filed under Rule 506 (c ) exemption which means that US citizens who invest must be accredited investors – those who are worth more than $ 1 million or have an annual income of $ 200,000 – so that tokens are not registered as SEC securities.

The Eastman Kodak Company, which had announced the launch of their own ICO ONU The same exemption in early January 2018 postponed their ICO to take longer to check the accredited status of their investors.

The date of the first sale for ICO Durovs is noted on January 29 this year. By filing with the SEC, the Durovs are preparing to allow US citizens to legally invest in their project, implying that US citizens may in fact be among the 81 investors.

Although the SEC filing does not contain the names of any investors in the Durov securities offer, Vedomosti today revealed the names of some of the largest investors suspected , citing internal sources

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who allegedly already invested in cryptocurrencies, would have been one of the first Russian citizens to be approved to invest in the project. An alleged source close to the billionaire told Vedomosti that Abramovich had invested up to $ 300 million, but another source claimed the sum was closer to $ 20 million.

Sergei Solonin, CEO of the Russian payment service provider QIWI mln, writes Vedomosti. David Yakobashvili, co-founder of Russian-based dairy company Wimm-Bill-Dann, said $ 10 million had been invested in the project.

An ICO telegram is under construction since December 2017, when a former Telegram employee wrote online that Telegram would launch its own Blockchain and Cryptocurrency platform, called "The Open Network" or "Telegram Open Network" (TON)

A white paper, alleging to be for TON, was leaked in mid-January, but its authenticity has not yet been publicly confirmed by the Durov brothers.

Durov's SEC filing lists two issuers of securities, TON Issuers Inc. and Telegram Group Inc., both located in the British Virgin Islands. In the "Related Persons" section of the filing, Pavel Durov is on the list of top executives and directors, while his brother Nikolai has just been appointed director.

A source close to the financing of TON told Vedomosti that funding the process was not conducted as an ICO in the "usual sense" of in which the tokens from one project are purchased for another cryptocurrency, usually Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH). Instead, according to the source, it was rather a closed allocation of securities in ordinary money [fiat] – dollars and euros. "

According to the same source, and in line with the deposit of the SEC by the brothers, investors bought rights to the internal cryptocurrency of TON, called" Grams ", which they will be distributed once the platform is launched.