Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange's chief executive Nick Cowan
The cryptocurrency world is buzzing at the plans of Pavel Durov, the Russian founder of the Telegram messaging app that attracted 60 million users in its first two years after launching in 2013 and now has around 200 million, to build a new blockchain network for encrypted messaging in multiple media across multiple devices.
The tech heads say this network could even be blockchain 3.0, surpassing Ethereum, the second-generation distributed ledger which won support by improving on the processing capacity, resiliency and speed of the original bitcoin blockchain.
For financiers, the most tantalizing aspect of the rumours is how Telegram will fund the build out. It is right now running a private token sale to invited investors that, according to various reports, could raise between $600 million and $800 million equivalent. An even larger public token sale will follow in March.
Combined, the two tranches could raise anywhere from $1.2 billion to $2 billion, making this by far the biggest ICO yet, in a market that has so far raised around $4 billion in aggregate from hundreds of smaller deals.
