Telegram Warns of Losses Unless Crypto Investors Agree to Delay

(Bloomberg) -- Telegram Group Inc. is telling investors who helped fund the creation of its digital token that they’ll only receive 77% of their money back unless they agree to postpone the launch of the cryptocurrency for six months.

Pavel Durov’s Telegram raised $1.7 billion in early 2018 to fund creating its own cryptocurrency Gram and blockchain infrastructure to operate it. It was scheduled to deliver tokens to investors by Oct. 31. The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission halted the process last week, arguing that Gram is essentially a security that wasn’t properly registered.

If investors don’t support the deadline extension to April 30, their token purchase agreements get terminated and they will be repaid up to about $1.3 billion of the amount invested in the coin offering, according to a letter from Durov to Telegram investors seen by Bloomberg News.

Telegram told investors it’s working to resolve the SEC lawsuit. It has also engaged with the U.S. Department of Treasury and registered as a money service business in the U.S.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anna Baraulina in Moscow at abaraulina@bloomberg.net;Ilya Khrennikov in Moscow at ikhrennikov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Brendan Walsh

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