Telegram has said that American TON investors will not be able to stay in the TON project for another 12 months.
On May 4, it has been reported by Russian news agency RBC that American TON investors will be only eligible for an immediate 72% repayment instead of a 110% refund option in April 2021.
However, the news comes after Telegram offered to refund its investors on April 30.
As per the report, the firm proposed two options, an immediate 72% refund, or 110% in 12 months.
The firm offered the second option as an “a token of gratitude” of trust in TON, promising to provide interested investors with a loan agreement shortly.
U.S. TON investors will have to accept 72% refund now rather than 110% next year. https://t.co/XGZiFBs6NW — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 4, 2020
According to an investor letter seen by RBC, Telegram had to retract the second option for its American investors due to an “uncertain stance by regulatory authorities in the United States.”
It has been analyzed that Telegram has been struggling to sort out regulatory issues with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch the TON network and its native Gram (GRM) token since October 2019.
As the project started in 2017, Telegram was preparing to launch the TON network in late 2019. However, the SEC considered Telegram’s $1.7 billion initial coin offering illegal (ICO) by arguing that the firm violated US securities law by conducting the ICO.
In March, after a long-running legal dispute, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York tentatively recognized that the SEC has a good chance of proving that Telegram’s GRAMs were unregistered securities.
As a result, Telegram was prohibited from delivering Gram tokens to investors, at least until trial.
Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, consequently offered a refund plan on April 30, apparently accepting the court ruling.
So, soon after Telegram revealed the investor repayment plan, some major figures in the crypto community criticized the TON project, such as Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital, and a major Bitcoin (BTC) bull, argued that there is no need for either the TON or Gram on April 30.
Thus, according to reports, the TON network can still be launched by independent validators regardless of the regulatory situation.
Source: Cointelegraph | Image: 9to5Mac