On how much money the Telegram was created

Lawyers at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) conducted an interrogation of the founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, in Dubai. The Bell claims that they got a transcript of communication between Paul and SEC lawyer George Turner.

It follows from the transcript that the main thing that the US authorities wanted to know was how much Telegram was created for, how it spends its budget, and why Durov needed to conduct an ICO and collect exactly $ 1.7 billion of investments. In addition, experts wondered if the TON team knew that Gram was not just a cryptocurrency, but a security.

According to the document, Durov and his team consider Gram to be a digital currency, and not a classic asset. They insisted on this in 2019 and since then nothing has changed. A large amount of investment was needed to purchase equipment that is designed to maintain the health of the TON blockchain.

The management of the messenger spends up to 40% of the total number of annual expenses on the purchase of “iron”. At the same time, 300 million active users are registered in Telegram, from which the messenger does not charge. It follows from the report that in the future it is planned to monetize the platform through advertising, but so far this moment has been postponed until better times due to the workload of the main team of programmers and engineers, which employs about 25 people. They work simultaneously on the messenger and on the TON platform.

From the document you can find out that the head of Telegram from 2013 to 2018 financed the project from his own pocket and invested the money received from the sale of the share of VKontakte. And in the period from 2017 to 2018, a certain amount was invested in Pavel’s company, but it is not known who was the investor.

The U.S. Securities Commission filed a lawsuit against Telegram last October. The US authorities said that Durov and his company raised $ 1.7 billion through an ICO, while violating the securities law.