Liquid, a Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange has announced that they will be canceling the sale of Telegram tokens following the delay in their launch.
According to Seth Melamed, who serves as the Head of Business Development at Liquid has ensured that the funds have been refunded to all of their clients without charging any fee.
Gram tokens, which was the basis of TON (Telegram Open Network), hasn’t been launched till now. It was expected to be live by the end of October 2019 but things have been going downhill ever since the US Securities and Exchange filed a lawsuit against the company and their gram tokens.
TON and gram tokens would have made Telegram much more than a messenger application. Founded by Nikolai and Pavel Durov in Russia, the company’s aim was to be a major part of a decentralized internet.
The SEC vs. Telegram
TON was set to disrupt the internet and it had raised more $1.7 billion from various investors but it couldn’t take off. Finally in mid-2018, the SEC intervened by stating that the gram token is unregistered currency.
Since then, TON has seen some tough times. Recently, the SEC has submitted the documents in the court stating that Telegram had been selling their tokens even after their ICO was over for months. However, the company doesn’t see things the same way and claimed that the fund transfers were commissions for outside US sales.
The SEC has also asked for all the bank records of Telegram related to the sale of gram tokens. Earlier the SEC was denied but eventually, they got around. In return, Telegram has asked for a time period of 7 weeks to avoid any kind of privacy breach.
The court has granted the company till February 26 to hand over all the documents to the SEC. The next meeting between the SEC and Telegram will be in the federal court on February 18.
Featured image from Pixabay
