Bluff or Not? Telegram’s GRAM is Being Offered for Sale at Triple ICO Price

Telegram’s unreleased Gram tokens are set for sale to the public at a price three times of its private placement. Still, the source from Telegram says they’ve never heard of Gram Asia.

South Korea’s Gram Asia allegedly offered to sell rights to the Telegram’s Gram tokens it holds, at $4 apiece in a sale beginning July 10 according to Japanese crypto-exchange Liquid. Bloomberg reports that this compares with $1.33 paid by private investors in the second ICO round in March 2018. The price will, however, be lowered to $3.50 per Gram if buyers use Liquid’s cryptocurrency QASH in the purchase.

And it’s not just the size of a fund-raising that is a landmark in the crypto world but also the fact that Telegram’s encrypted-messaging app boasts over 200 million users. The company was founded by Russian Pavel Durov who managed to raise $1.7 billion from qualified investors last year to fund developing the Telegram Open Network blockchain, which will use the cryptocurrency Gram.

However, we are still not sure if this is a big bluff because, just to remind you, we already wrote of how on June 11 Liquid announced that it would be hosting the sale, but our source said that there is no relationship between the two entities. The source further said that the June 11 press release was the first time they had heard of Gram Asia.

Additionally, a Telegram investor commented that no one has the rights to sell Gram tokens before the official launch. Per a token purchase contract, the buyer agrees to not:

“ENTER INTO ANY swap or other AGREEMENT THAT TRANSFERS, in whole or in part, ANY OF THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF OWNERSHIP OF THE INVESTMENT CONTRACT represented by this Purchase Agreement or any Tokens.”

Be it as it may, the Gram token sale has been highly anticipated by the public markets and let’s just remind you that Liquid had hosted its own Qash token sale successfully in 2017, selling out 350 million Qash tokens, equivalent to US$105 million, in just three days.

According to the company, all Gram token sale participants on Liquid will need to have a verified and funded Liquid account in order to qualify for the offering. Minimum electronic verification requirements to participate in the Gram token sale include submitting a government ID and a selfie. All documents can be submitted online on Liquid, with the assistance of a 24/7 live chat team.

Liquid will supposedly have TON-compatible wallets integrated into its platform, where Gram token sale participants will have their Grams delivered upon the launch of the public mainnet launch of the TON Blockchain, which is expected to take place by October 31st, 2019. All proceeds from the Gram token sale will be kept in custody of Liquid and will be fully refunded in the event the TON mainnet is not launched.

Telegram Open Network is known as a fast and inherently scalable decentralized multi-blockchain architecture, designed to be the first mass-market cryptocurrency project. Users are expecting that the company will drive demand for the TON blockchain by leveraging its existing ecosystem of developers, publishers, payment providers, merchants and most importantly, its 260 million users.

Mike Kayamori, co-founder and CEO of Liquid said:

“We are excited to be partnering with Gram Asia to launch the Gram token sale, which is wonderful news to our community who are native users of Telegram. We share the vision for a more secure and open value transfer system in order to enable the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. The TON Blockchain infrastructure can help enhance Telegram’s current capabilities as a peer to peer network of value, with the launch of their cryptocurrency light wallets for Telegram’s highly engaged user base.”

However, since Durov didn’t respond or answered any of our questions, it’s up for us to wait and see if this was a real thing or just a bluff.