Some of the best news in weeks for the crypto space
With a massive 132-page whitepaper, chat giant Telegram announced today that they will seek $500M in what may be the first mega-ICO of 2018, garnering a valuation of around $4 billion (for reference, Snapchat is "worth" $17B today.) They aim to build a Telegram Open Network to rival other major cryptoeconomic ecosystems.
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Source: telegram.org
This is a great thing for 2 reasons:
We need more scalable platform tokens
The Telegram network will be inherently sharded, with 2^92 blockchains power transactions. Too complex, or too good-sounding to be true? We'll see. Sharding is hard to do securely - even Vitalik hasn't fully figured it out yet, and he's done a lot more than make a successful chat app.
Source: unsplash.com
Legitimacy for the ICO model
Until today, the only real household name to hold an ICO was Kik, also a chat app (largely adult in use) which is now shaping itself around blockchain. Here, retail investors have a chance to get in on a semi-fairly priced company that will not IPO on the stock market. It will be a real test to how ICOs are fairly run and if done right, will show that founders can launch semi-public companies without the disadvantages that accompany a US public stock offering.