A U.S. District Judge has approved the majority of redaction requests received during the proceedings surrounding the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against messaging firm Telegram over its $1.7 billion initial coin offering (ICO). The SEC took action against Telegram in October 2019, filing a temporary restraining order barring Telegram from distributing its tokens. The SEC submitted a cache of documents in support of its temporary restraining order, including roughly one dozen exhibits that revealed the strategic considerations of venture capital firms and investors who participated in the ICO and later cooperated with the SEC. The documents were filed …

After years of unsuccessful efforts to ban Telegram in Russia, local authorities have finally decided to cancel the ban on the major encrypted messenger in the country. Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, also known as Roskomnadzor, has officially lifted the two-year-long ban on Telegram. In an official statement on Thursday, Roskomnadzor said that the authority has removed requirements restricting the access to the Telegram messenger in agreement with the Prosecutor General of Russia. Announcing the news, Roskomnadzor outlined that the regulator commends Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s willingness to confront terrorism and extremism. The …

Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, lashes out at Facebook and Instagram for making money off of scammy ads that use Durov’s name and image. Through his Russian Telegram channel on June 17, Durov accuses the tech giant of turning the deaf ear to user complaints: “For over a year, Facebook and Instagram have been making money off of advertisements promoting scams that are being launched from my name. <...> These machinations are approved by Facebook’s moderators, which allows them the status of advertisement, thus misleading people.” Facebook has enough resources for political censorship One of the scams cited by Durov was …

David Weild IV, who is known as the father of the JOBS Act, believes that the U.S. government had to move to stamp out Facebook’s Libra stablecoin. Facebook: Number of Active Users. Source: Statista. ‘Government’s got to do something’ In an interview with Cointelegraph, Weild said that when he first heard about Zuckerberg’s initiative, he knew right away that the government needed to step in: “When I heard what Zuckerberg was going to do (and this was before the government clamped down), I said ‘the government’s got to do something here.’ And it was picked up by the House Financial …

On June 2, a South Korean court ordered a freeze on all the cryptocurrency wallets, securities deposits, and stocks account owned by Cho Ju-bin, the suspected head of Nth Room. Nth Room is a Telegram channel under investigation for circulating child pornography. According to KBS Korea, the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Settlement Division 30, led by Judge Lee Hyun-woo, accepted the request from prosecutors in the South Korean capital to freeze 15 cryptocurrencies wallets that reportedly belong to Cho. The funds within the confiscated are suspected of clarifying the profits that the defendant would have obtained as the mastermind …

Telegram’s terminated blockchain project, Telegram Open Network, or TON, keeps spawning new community-led TON networks. While there are at least two global TON-based initiatives so far, namely Free TON and NewTON, the Chinese TON Community has opted to launch their own TON network. In a May 29 blog post, the Chinese TON Community voiced its intention to launch a separate TON-based network. The new effort comes in response to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov officially shutting down the firm’s involvement in the project, the post notes. Blockchain testnet is a first step The community plans to launch their own TON blockchain …

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of popular messaging app Telegram, has purportedly resumed his charity activity soon after terminating Telegram’s blockchain project. Known for philanthropic activity, including a $1 million donation to Wikipedia, Durov has donated 10 bitcoins (BTC) to a charity project in Russia. The coins are worth around $96,000 at time of publication. Donation will help people facing financial difficulties due to coronavirus The new donation intends to support a project backed by political activist, Yegor Zhukov — who established himself as a symbol of anti-Kremlin protests. The donated Bitcoin will be spent to help people facing financial …

A major state authority in Russia has objected to the State Duma’s proposal to cancel the ban on Telegram’s encrypted messenger in the country. Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, also known as MinComSvyaz, doesn’t support a recent initiative to lift the two-year-long Telegram ban, local news agency Interfax reports May 26. Russia doesn’t need more services to spread information about COVID-19 On April 22, two deputies at the State Duma proposed a draft bill on terminating the ban of Telegram in Russia due to the coronavirus outbreak. The proposal stipulates that Telegram has become an “official …

TON once stood for “Telegram Open Network,” but has changed its name to reflect the messaging giant’s departure from the blockchain project. The project will simply be known as “The Open Network” going forward. Telegram officially terminated its involvement in Telegram Open Network in mid-May 2020. Although Telegram’s version of TON is no longer moving forward, it has given rise to other projects like Free TON and NewTON. The name change was planned from the beginning TON’s white paper revealed that the project’s name has two different meanings — “Telegram Open Network,” and “The Open Network”. Revealed in early 2018, …

A new kind of cryptocurrency tipbot allows users to pay others to answer their questions on social media, providing a new tool to pool data in the ecosystem. Liser Lee of CCTip told Cointelegraph that the system can help drive engagement or generate expert commentary. It lets users create a Twitter poll and automatically pay anyone who shares it with cryptocurrency, helping a poll gain more exposure and answers. The company is also considering a system pays the poll respondents instead. Other than Twitter, CCTip will also work on Telegram, Discord, WeChat and on Reddit as well. It supports 200 …

Telegram has withdrawn its appeal against a United States federal court’s injunction that froze Gram token issuance and distribution, according to court documents dated May 22. The move seems to suggest that the company has fully abandoned its TON plans. Earlier this month, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced their “active involvement” with the project was over, criticizing U.S. regulators for overextending their power. Announced in 2017, Telegram’s TON is a blockchain platform aimed at facilitating payments via Gram tokens and hosting decentralized applications at high scalability levels. After it raised almost $1.7 billion in two private token sale rounds next …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s vigor in pursuing initial coin offerings, or ICOs, has become a major boogeyman within the crypto community. Most recently, the case against Telegram ended with that company abandoning its planned open network and Gram tokens, which raised $1.7 billion. The question before the crypto community is now: Have we witnessed the death of the ICO? The answer is yes, in that, with all due fear of predictions, we will never see the likes of 2017’s ICO boom again. That vision of an ICO is indeed dead. This is not the end for new …