Telegram is a popular, global, cloud-based instant messaging, videotelephone and voice-over service company. Particularly popular with crypto-enthusiasts, at the end of 2017, Telegram came up with a plan to raise funds to support the development of a new crypto asset, dubbed Gram, and a network originally planned as the Telegraph Open Network. Proceeds would also fund further expansion of the messaging service that had previously been funded by the founders. Telegram set out to fundraise in two distinct stages. The first involved the sale of contractual rights to acquire Grams if and when they were successfully launched. The second stage …

Major encrypted messaging app provider Telegram has expressed support for the mass protests in Belarus against sitting President Alexander Lukashenko. On Aug. 25, the Telegram app introduced a new animated emoji to replace the national flag of Belarus with the white-red-white flag. Opposed to the official red and green flag of Belarus, the white-red-white flag is used as a symbol of the opposition to Lukashenko's regime. With the new feature, the emoji of Belarus’ national flag automatically turns to the animated opposition flag when a single symbol is typed in a message. Telegram’s latest gesture of support for the opposition …

Telegram Messenger Inc has voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against Lantah LLC over the use of the ‘GRAM’ trademark for its cryptocurrency token of the same name. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Telegram will have to pay reasonable attorney fees to Lantah for defending the lawsuit since 2018. As Lantah has not submitted records documenting its legal costs, the parties must now negotiate a reasonable sum before reconvening with the court. The judge dismissed the suit without prejudice to refiling, allowing Telegram to make claims over the GRAM trademark in the future and rejecting Lantah’s request for dismissal with …

Most days, there is little love lost between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the world of crypto. As the regulator of the world’s largest capital market, the commission’s continuing work to track down sales for tokens it considers unregistered securities has left a fair bit of the crypto market viewing the commission like a boogeyman. Which is not fair. There are controversial cases, but the ICO boom was rampant with predation, fraud and theft: Exactly the sort of issues you keep a regulator around to stamp out. Right now, though, the SEC is faced with a wide …

Pavel Durov, CEO of the popular encrypted messaging platform, Telegram, has denied reports that the firm is preparing to sell the company after the failure of Telegram’s blockchain project. According to an Aug. 5 report by local tech publication iXBT, Russia’s internet company Mail.ru is one of the parties interested in acquiring Telegram. Another is an as yet unidentified Russian billionaire. The information was reportedly shared by Russia-based trader and analyst, Kirill Promzin. As reported by iXBT, Promzin predicted Bitcoin’s 2017 bull run back in 2012, even calling the asset’s eventual high of $20,000. Shortly after the iXBT’s report was …

Two icons of tech — one American, one Russian — are hard at work trying to win back the jilted governments of their home countries by stirring up concerns over foreign competitors. When nationalism meets tech In a hearing tomorrow before the congressional Antitrust Subcommittee, Mark Zuckerberg plans to portray Facebook as the American champion to meet Chinese tech. Meanwhile, Pavel Durov has waged a similar campaign to rehabilitate Telegram in his native Russia, largely by painting U.S. tech as an invading force. It’s an interesting strategy, especially since the PR for both Facebook and Telegram has historically leaned into …

TONCommunity.org, one of the multiple spin-offs of Telegram’s unlaunched blockchain network, has announced that its tetsnet is now live. After announcing plans for a separate TON network in late May, TONCommunity.org launched the testnet on July 28, the project’s founder Tooz Wu told Cointelegraph. Official TON testnet to shut down by Aug. 1 Alongside the testnet launch, TONCommunity.org is holding an airdrop of mainnet tokens, known as “TONcoins.” The latest airdrop is available for all Telegram users and features 10 million TONcoins, Wu said. Dubbed “testnet3,” the Chinese TON Community’s testnet poses itself as a continuation of the official TON …

Whale Alert, a popular service dedicated to tracking major cryptocurrency transactions, is being negatively affected by Twitter’s anti-hack measures. In a July 16 tweet, Whale Alert said that the crypto bot can no longer tweet any transactions either automatically or manually “due to anti-hack measures taken by Twitter.” Whale Alert noted that posts are still available on their Telegram channel, and expressed hope that Twitter will resolve the issue soon. Whale Alert told Cointelegraph that they expect it to be a few days before posting on the platform returns to normal: “Last night's hack is the single biggest security breach …

At the start of July, Telegram announced it was discontinuing its support for the test network of Telegram Open Network in what seems as yet another — possibly the last — sign that the company is leaving its blockchain project for good. Telegram chose to abandon TON as a result of a drawn-out legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which apparently was close to convincing the court that TON’s private $1.7 billion initial public offering was an unregistered securities sale. So, does the latest development mean that TON is dead? Developers of independent TON-based projects don’t …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Which way Bitcoin price? Current “stablecoin” period mimics early 2017 Bitcoin’s price has hardly moved an inch in the last six weeks — barely moving 2% in either direction from its average. This long period of stagnation resembles what happened in early 2017. BTC stayed around $900 for the first three months of the year, …

Cryptocurrencies have been around for more than 10 years, but the legal status of Bitcoin (BTC) and most other cryptocurrencies remains unclear and has different definitions in various jurisdictions. Are they money, an asset, a product, property or something else? Should they trade freely or must be tightly regulated? In the absence of a clear answer, governments in the United States and Europe are still issuing legal acts to regulate the cryptocurrency market and trying to determine their attitude toward cryptos. In the first several months of 2020 alone in France, Germany and Australia, authorities issued decisions with three different …

In a July 7 fireside chat courtesy of Unitize, Commissioner Hester Peirce of the Securities and Exchange Commission continued to advocate for regulatory clarity for crypto as a means of opening up capital markets to innovation. Innovation and regulation “I believe in the power of our capital markets to transform people’s lives,” said Peirce. “I wanted to make sure that our regulatory structure was flexible enough to accommodate innovation.” She noted that the the size of the U.S. economy makes its regulations critical to global fundraising: “The race to the bottom is something we should be concerned about. But that’s …