Telegram gives up and calls off its Gram and the Telegram Open Network
After a long period of dealing with heavy controls from US authorities, Telegram’s cryptocurrency project has officially been killed. Its founder, Pavel Durov, exploded against the country’s unfair efforts to crush any attempt at monetary decentralization, confirming in a post on his Telegram channel yesterday that the Telegram Open Network (TON), along with its Gram currency, was forcibly shut down. He blames the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for what happened.
“Unfortunately, a US court stopped TON from happening,” Durov said, adding that the court ruled “people should not be allowed to buy or sell Grams like they can buy or sell Bitcoins.” Durov was outraged by the response from the US court, adding, “Perhaps even more paradoxically, the US court declared that Grams couldn’t be distributed not only in the United States but globally. Why? Because, it said, a US citizen might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched.”
The battle against the SEC started when Telegram got its project off the ground and raised a total of $1.7 billion by selling its future digital currency. This caused an immediate reaction from the government agency that sued the company in a federal court, making accusations of committing “ongoing illegal offering of digital-asset securities.” The SEC was even able to obtain a restraining order, which forbids Telegram from continue selling Grams and blocking all efforts that culminated in a dead initiative.
“Today, we are in a vicious circle: you can’t bring more balance to an overly centralized world exactly because it’s so centralized. We did try though,” Durov said. He added that Washington was a dark force that controls the “global financial system” and can even yield tech giants like Google and make them comply.
