Telegram’s Cryptocurrency to be Sold at Triple ICO Price in Public Offering

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid will be holding a public sale of the Gram token, Telegram Messenger’s cryptocurrency, on July 10, Bloomberg reported on July 3.

According to the report, the sale price of Gram will be $4 per token, triple its original value, which was $1.33 during its second initial coin offering round in March 2018. The sale will apparently happen exclusively on Liquid, according to the exchange’s website, with Gram Asia offering to sell the rights to the Gram tokens it holds. Bloomberg also reported that users who buy Gram with QASH, Liquid’s native token, will receive a $0.50 discount per token, which is only partly true.

The 12.5% discount is indeed possible, but in order to qualify for it, users will need to hold QASH prior to the sale. Depending on the QASH in possession of users, there are four discount tiers – 5% for 5,000 QASH, 7.5% for 20,000 QASH, 10% for 35,000 QASH and the 12.5% one requires you to hold 50,000 of Liquid’s tokens.

During Telegram’s March ICO, which was also hosted on the Japanese crypto exchange Liquid, the company behind the messenger app was able to raise $850 million from qualified investors, bringing its total valuation to $1.7 billion. The funds were raised in order for Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, to begin development of the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain, which will use the Gram cryptocurrency.

Durov is aiming to create a blockchain, which will enable transaction speeds faster than Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), and is hoping to compete with Visa and Mastercard. The yet to be released token Gram will be used to pay for services on the TON blockchain, such as user applications, decentralized data storage, and bypassing censorship.

The upcoming token sale was initially announced on June 11, by the Liquid exchange, through a press release. The announcement also revealed that Telegram, which is used by more than 200 million people, is hoping to release its Gram token by the end of the third quarter of 2019. Research by Russian research agency Aton, published on Cointelegraph, estimates the future price of Gram between $2.10 and $8.00.