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Who is funding Telegram? How a decade of unprofitability hasn’t stopped the messenger app from growing


Why Telegram’s staggering growth remains a failure from a business perspective, and who the investors are that funded the app despite it only recently showing signs of generating revenue.

Apparently, realising the need to attract funds, three years before announcing it brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov decided to create a blockchain platform called Telegram Open Network (TON) featuring their own cryptocurrency, Gram. "The idea was to launch their own cryptocurrency, incorporate it into the messenger app, and announce themselves as the largest system by number of users in an attempt to displace Ethereum," explained Anton Rosenberg, former Director of Special Projects at Telegram. Two weeks before that date, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram Group Inc. and TON Issuer Inc. in the Southern District of New York, seeking a temporary ban on the sale of tokens.

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