Seems like a bit of wand waving going on in your description there.
Seems like a bit of wand waving going on in your description there.
This is my limited understanding:
1) You want to allow users to send and businesses to receive (micro-)payments within your messenger/protocol.
2) You want to allow users donate/vote/gift/award other users/groups/posts with their tokens within your messenger.
3) You want to allow users create custom (chat-)bots which could apply some scripted logic to send/receive tokens; etc.
Inventing a new distributed messenger/protocol with cryptocurrency, you essentially create (and own) a new platform with services operating on "virtual money". Rules of money (tokens) distribution in theory must be guaranteed by your protocol implementation (usually presented via whitepaper).
If potential future users like your idea (whitepaper), they may invest into your new shiny platform via ICO (with other cryptocurrencies) to get some of your initial (limited) tokens. They want to get them while they cost less than they potentially will cost later, if your platform becomes popular. It's assumed that in the case of an open distributed blockchain platform, amount and belonging of tokens won't be able to be painted by you, but guaranteed by algorithms and public network.
We've seen how it works on totally scam projects. And apparently, we'll have a chance to witness how this works out in case of the already popular platform[1].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/inside-telegrams-ambitious...
It seems like a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem (at least in the way I keep seeing it described): you fund your project/app/scam with money from your ICO, but you only get money from your ICO when people believe in your project enough to put ("real") money in it prematurely.
At best, this is basically the Kickstarter model that everybody likes to trash, is it not?
But people who participate and invest from the start can make money if the project succeeds. So the economic incentives for those involved are greater than the incentives in a walled garden.
There actually already exists a coin connected to messaging protocols, Kin. I don't see much practical use for it however.