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Telegram has raised an initial $850M for its billion-dollar ICO
- corndoge 9y agoIsn't their crypto implementation still private?
- rootw0rm 9y agono, but it's still weird.
- ktta 9y agoIt is. I hope they don't do the same thing with their code for whatever they're making.
- rootw0rm 9y agoNo it's not, the source is on Github. Windows client looks like it uses openssl, Android client looks like it uses boringssl. I didn't actually clone the repos and and take a proper look tho.
- jstanley 9y agoWhat do you mean by "it is"? The Telegram client is open source.
- steve19 9y agoThe telegram server is not.
- SXX 9y agoIn this case "private" have nothing to do with the code license. Problem with Telegram is that protocol and cryptography they use is their own. They might use better reviewed protocol like one of Signal, but they didn't. No need to explain what dangers same strategy going to cause with cryptocurrencies.
- unicornporn 9y agoWas the Signal protocol reviewed in 2013 when Telegram was launched? It seems it was developed in 2013. I'd say the biggest problem with Telegram is the fact that E2EE isn't enabled by default and no one (that I've chatted with) uses it.
- def_true_false 9y agoThe official desktop client doesn't even support it, after years of people asking for it. Telegram is basically equivalent to Hangouts or any other random chat app, if you care about security.
- unicornporn 9y agoYup, terrible. The native macOS desktop client (available in App Store) actually supports it. At least it did when I tried it.
- dfox 9y agoPeople will tell you, that there is big gaping crypto vulnerability in Telegrams client-server crypto because it is not secure under CCA. In fact this is only certificational weakness (ie. attacker can replace message with different ciphertext that encodes exactly same message). The crypto is somewhat weird, but it is clear that motivation for the weirdness is getting small ciphertexts.
- ktta 9y agoClient doesn't mean everything. In applications like these, there shouldn't be even a single binary blob without code for it. To their credit, they said they will, but this[1] has been on their website since a very long time. [1]:https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-open-source-everything https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-open-source-everything
- ryanlol 9y agoGiven that their crypto implementation is not even actually used, this seems like a red herring. Telegram is not an encrypted messaging app.
- mcrittenden 9y agoThat's a little misleading. Telegram supports "secret chats" which are e2e encrypted. See https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-secret-chats-different https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-secret-chats-different and https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end
- ryanlol 9y agoI think that’s more misleading. Certain telegram clients support encrypted chats, which are never ever used by anyone.
- ttul 9y agoThere’s definitely zero hype left in Blockchain.
- arthurcolle 9y agocrypto/blockchain is significant and has broad implications for how human social structures cooperate on a global scale. consider everything you do on a daily basis and think about transactions and interactions you have with others - all of them
- firefoxd 9y agoMaybe I'm the last to join the party but if i understand correctly, is this money they are going to receive as investment? I ask because as much as i can google I can't find any product they are selling or any ad they are displaying, so what is being bought here? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, is there something i am missing?
- mhluongo 9y agoThere's a private whitepaper floating around.
- firasd 9y agoPresumably they will use the tokens in the app for payments and a way to run decentralized applications (so paying for computation, storage, etc.) What's being sold is the potential for the token price to appreciate in value. It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold.
- mhluongo 9y agoThat certainly depends- Ethereum didn't sell equity and investors in the pre-sale did very well.
- panarky 9y ago> It's definitely a worse deal for investors than an IPO as there is no equity being sold. If you pay $100,000 for 100 shares of Google I guess you're technically getting equity, but what exactly is the advantage of that? Sure, your broker has a digital ledger that records your ownership, but is that fundamentally different from digital entries in any other ledger just because there's equity? Whether you buy Google shares or Telegram tokens, the only reason you're buying is because you expect the price to go up in the future. I'm not sure equity has anything to do with it.
- jmickey 9y agoWell, with shares you are more or less guaranteed that they will increase in value, if the company does well. With tokens this is not clear, as it would be possible for Telegram to do insanely well, but the tokens not being very popular/being used for some unimportant feature.
- granaldo 9y agoTo be honest I have not seen any official marketing page from telegram nor any ico calendars like https://www.coingecko.com/en/ico https://www.coingecko.com/en/ico . Is this entirely private by some group of deserving entities? When will the public can and able to participate?
- currriuosly 9y agoThat's interesting for sure as it is not even on biggest tracker https://www.trackico.io https://www.trackico.io
- digitalni 9y agoThe cake is eaten first by the guys with big guns. Then, ICO will likely go public, where public buys enough so that the big guys can dump and get what they invested + interest. If you want in, you are already late to the party...
- konart 9y agoMost likely next month or soon after
- tonfa 9y agoThey seem to want to do things properly wrt SEC. That would mean only advertising to accredited investors.
- CryptoPunk 9y agoThanks to securities laws, the rich get richer, and the poor have to wait for the scraps. Ideally the SEC's mandate would be limited to going after P&D groups and other scams, and no longer include enforcing restrictions on selling securities to unaccredited investors as a non-public company. If the poorest households are allowed to spend 9% of their income on lottery tickets, I don't see the justification for preventing unaccredited investors from investing in whatever they want. All it does is eliminate the long-tail of small companies and nonprofessional investors from participating directly in a key sector of the economy.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoThis is hilarious as so many people use telegram to pump and dump crypto currency using Telegram.
- slimshady94 9y agoThere's obviously no way they need so much money. The discounts pre-sale investors receive on their tokens will be enough to let them sell at a profit when the tokens become saleable. We don't even know how far along is the implementation they're working on, what will future adoption be like - at this point, there's only insider investors looking to cash in on the hype.
- rs86 9y agoYep. 850m is a crazy amount of money for product development. What do they want to do with all that money?
- therealmarv 9y agoAnother ICO. ICO that, ICO this... you cannot even go to another tech conference without an ICO gets mentioned. All this 1000 of crypto coins are useless in long term and I won't support Telegram too. There are 3 main players named Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum which will stay here longterm and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
- johnsushant 9y agoYou mention Litecoin but not Ripple?
- therealmarv 9y agoRipple will also stay I think. But I would be careful of Ripple. Just my opinion. It's interesting it's connected so well with many financial institutions and that they have big names on board but I would be a bank I would rather look in something like Stellar than Ripple which is (theoretically) in a centralized control of one entitity. All this locked up XRPs which are not in circulation would not let me sleep well.
- wildchild 9y agoHopefully these scammers will take a hefty fine one day.
- runeks 9y agoThe inherent issue with ICOs is pricing. Buying tokens, which can be exchanged for a service at an unknown ratio (price), amounts to financing a new fast food chain by buying a million tokens for $1,000, where the tokens can be used to purchase hamburgers once the chain opens. The problem is that you have no idea if those million tokens — once the chain is up and running — will buy a thousand hamburgers or three. So there’s a dichotomy here. Either your tokens remain low in value, and the end product of the business will be cheap (as it’s priced in these tokens) and you make no money as an investor, or the token price will increase and the end product will be expensive (but you’ll be able to sell your tokens for a profit). In the end it’s a useless proposition: either token holders will be able to buy cheap hamburgers if the token price is low (thus causing a loss to the issuer/hamburger producer) or they will sell their expensive tokens for dollars and use dollars to buy their hamburgers elsewhere.
- saurik 9y ago> the end product of the business will be cheap (as it’s priced in these tokens) Essentially every one of these services creates a distributed market and almost none of them make the mistake of somehow deciding the price of the service in tokens in a way that wouldn't cause the market to adjust to reflect the value of the token (and ironically the only one I can come up with that makes this mistake was the WhopperCoin ;P). If the value of the token doubles then the cost in tokens of using the service should quickly drop by half. This is an annoying volatility but the service absolutely doesn't become more expensive or cheaper based on the value of the token. This isn't "one token buys one hamburger", this is simply "you can buy and sell hamburgers with tokens".
- PKop 9y agoBut as a consumer, why would I place my trust, and store my value in your shallow liquidity token when I prefer to just hold dollars? Certainly the company ICO'ing benefits from the infusion of money selling their token, but what is the value prop for all these different tokens for consumers? (read: not speculators or investors) Also, if the tokens trade for fiat on an exchange, then they certainly would be volatile as far as what value they can be exchanged for. How can you ensure the service doesn't become more expensive?
- utellme 9y agoOne of the wealthiest russians Roman Abramovich invested about $300M in Telegram. https://en.crimerussia.com/oligarchs/roman-abramovich-invests-300mln-in-pavel-durov-s-telegram/ https://en.crimerussia.com/oligarchs/roman-abramovich-invest...
- RomanPushkin 9y agoThat's really bad if it's true. When thugs invest in technology there are many other risks besides reputation, trust, etc.
- utellme 9y agoI don't see any bad consequences of such investing. Russians are famous of their conservative approach, but even conservatives sometimes do efforts.
- dennisgorelik 9y agoThat means that Roman Abramovich is the largest investor in Telegram ($300M is 35% of $850M).
- utellme 9y agoThe only question is - was it business investment followed by will of Abramovich or something else?
- gaetanrickter 9y agoRelevant: 'Dawn of the Billion Dollar ICO' https://hackernoon.com/the-dawn-of-the-1b-ico-a0486f6587a2 https://hackernoon.com/the-dawn-of-the-1b-ico-a0486f6587a2
- davidgrenier 9y agoThis is going to be an interesting fiasco, chewing ever more on the shaky public trust. The layman still getting in on this stuff makes it so private investors can liquidate their worthless investment at a premium, the former won't learn before the later does.
- ebbv 9y agoThis is truly nuts. We are living through some truly irrational craziness that makes the dot com bubble look like nothing. When this correction comes it’s gonna be really bad. Greed is not a good thing folks.
- miralabs 9y agoI guess they are expecting x20 basing it on the 20B paid to Whatsapp
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- stevebmark 9y agoOther than the people at the top laundering money, I don't see how anyone could get tricked into putting any money into this.
- zanny 9y agoWe now live in a world where you can have two products side by side, where one has any of "Crypto" "Block" Coin" or "Chain" in their name or description and the other does not, where both products do the exact same thing, and have one of them raise billions of dollars overnight from VCs and the other one not get a single upvote on the new page of HN. We truly live in a post-informational time. Everything is emotion. Nothing is about rationalization or sense or an actual understanding of how something works. Because we don't know how the thing worked, the numbers got giant, and we want giant numbers too. So if you use the same words as the thing we will plow money into you like no tomorrow because we still don't understand the thing but we see 1000x profit in 5 years.
- myegorov 9y agoSeing that "people at the top" hold a non-negligible fraction of world's assets lends some credibility to cryptocurrencies.
- orasis 9y agoGiven that Russians created Telegram, why does anyone trust it?
- zebraflask 9y agoMore Russian bullshit.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mongrov 9y agoUsefull post indeed. Would be interested to read more about this..!!! - Mongro https://mongrov.com/ https://mongrov.com/