On May 12, 2020, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced that that the Telegram Open Network (“TON”) project would be discontinued due to the company’s ongoing legal dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”)[1]. This was a dramatic twist to the Telegram narrative. Many issues remain unclear. Central to the matter was Telegram’s capital raise from US investors. It is therefore critical to examine Telegram’s US capital raising efforts and its implications. Telegram is a private company (Telegram Group Inc. and TON Issuer Inc., collectively “Telegram” or the “Company”) widely known for its encrypted messaging application “Messenger”. In early…
