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 Telegramβs user base is already fairly crypto-savvy. It raised an initial tranche of cash β worth more than a billion dollars β 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. In 2014, Pavel Durov fled the country after allies of the Kremlin took control of the social networking site most know just as VK. Russia's intelligence agency had asked Durov to turn over the data of anti-Kremlin protesters. Durov refused to do so. That hurt tech stocks. For the past few weeks, the 10-year yield has traded between 1.72% and 2%, as traders moved into the bond for safety when Russia headlines were uglyβand out of it when headlines improved. Now, the yield is touching its pandemic-era high. If the yield breaks above that level, that could signal that itβs on a sustainable path higher. Higher long-dated bond yields make future profits less valuableβand many tech companies are valued on the basis of profits forecast for many years in the future. Either way, Durov says that he withdrew his resignation but that he was ousted from his company anyway. Subsequently, control of the company was reportedly handed to oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Igor Sechin, both allegedly close associates of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He said that since his platform does not have the capacity to check all channels, it may restrict some in Russia and Ukraine "for the duration of the conflict," but then reversed course hours later after many users complained that Telegram was an important source of information.
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