At the start of 2018, the company attempted to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which would enable it to enable payments (and earn the cash that comes from doing so). The initial signals were promising, especially given Telegramโs user base is already fairly crypto-savvy. It raised an initial tranche of cash โ worth more than a billion dollars โ to help develop the coin before opening sales to the public. Unfortunately, third-party sales of coins bought in those initial fundraising rounds raised the ire of the SEC, which brought the hammer down on the whole operation. In 2020, officials ordered Telegram to pay a fine of $18.5 million and hand back much of the cash that it had raised. Since its launch in 2013, Telegram has grown from a simple messaging app to a broadcast network. Its user base isnโt as vast as WhatsAppโs, and its broadcast platform is a fraction the size of Twitter, but itโs nonetheless showing its use. While Telegram has been embroiled in controversy for much of its life, it has become a vital source of communication during the invasion of Ukraine. But, if all of this is new to you, let us explain, dear friends, what on Earth a Telegram is meant to be, and why you should, or should not, need to care. You may recall that, back when Facebook started changing WhatsAppโs terms of service, a number of news outlets reported on, and even recommended, switching to Telegram. Pavel Durov even said that users should delete WhatsApp โunless you are cool with all of your photos and messages becoming public one day.โ But Telegram canโt be described as a more-secure version of WhatsApp. "There is a significant risk of insider threat or hacking of Telegram systems that could expose all of these chats to the Russian government," said Eva Galperin with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has called for Telegram to improve its privacy practices. At this point, however, Durov had already been working on Telegram with his brother, and further planned a mobile-first social network with an explicit focus on anti-censorship. Later in April, he told TechCrunch that he had left Russia and had โno plans to go back,โ saying that the nation was currently โincompatible with internet business at the moment.โ He added later that he was looking for a country that matched his libertarian ideals to base his next startup.
from hk
