Following Thursday news That Telegram had agreed to settle the case of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the abandoned cryptocurrency project, a judge accepted the terms on Friday.
Now, the courier platform can get past the federal scrutiny that has haunted him since the SEC filed a lawsuit in October 2019, when it claimed that the $ 1.7 billion raised in an ICO constituted an illegal securities offering.
However, Telegram did not come out of the disaster without a significant penalty. While Telegram admitted that there were no irregularities in the deal, the company will have to pay a civil fine of $ 18.5 million to the SEC, as well as alert the agency in advance if it wants to issue more digital currencies in the next three years.
Telegram must also return the $ 1,224 billion to unspent investors out of the $ 1.7 billion it raised through its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018. The company has already taken that step with investors, offering to pay the remaining percentage now or keep the amount as a loan and pay 110% of the original investment a year later.
“Given that we saw limited value in moving forward with the court case, we appreciated the opportunity to resolve it without admitting or denying our responsibility,” CEO Pavel Durov wrote in his personal telegram channel.
“We look forward to continuing our other projects and avenues of innovation,” he added, “and we hope that the regulatory environment for blockchain technology in the United States will be more favorable to others in the future.”
The rise and fall of TON
Telegram officially left the open Telegram network (TON) crypto project on May 12. The company launched the program with its ICO 2018 in an attempt to monetize the messaging platform, which has more than 400 million global users.
Following the SEC filing last October, Telegram’s attorneys attempted to defend the ICO claiming that the company was not selling Gram cryptocurrencies, but rather the rights to the grams that would be minted in the future. The SEC apparently did not buy that argument.
With legal issues preventing Telegram from launching the network before April 30, the promised deadline for investors, the company was forced to cancel its plans.
“Unfortunately, we were unable to launch the TON platform on our due date due to the preliminary court order ordered by the Court, and therefore we had to return the remaining funds to the buyers under our contractual agreements,” Durov wrote on his channel. from Telegram.
Telegram washed TON’s hands and accepted the deal, but the network will continue in through external collaborators. Using Telegram’s open source code, community organizations like Free TON, NewTON and TON Chinese Community plan to bring the network to life.
