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Comment by mrb | Hacker News Reader

Per the SEC filing, yes, they are receiving the $850M as cash from private investors (mostly VCs).

The "product" they are selling is tokens for their ecosystem, described in this leaked whitepaper: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oaKoJDWvhtlvtQEuqxgfkUHcI5...

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Thanks, that was a good read. And raises a lot of questions in my mind.

They are going to use PoS mechanism. So, I had to look at the token distribution scheme. 4% by the team and 52% by "Ton Reserve", which I think is not explained. With only 44% held in hands of non-Ton people, is this even decentralized?

If it's proof of stake and the majority is held in a single hand and the proof of stake required isn't a supermajority... then it's basically a database under the control of one entity.

ICOs aren't decentralized. They are tokens sold by an entity that premine them and generally control most aspects of the project. There might be exceptions, but I can't think of any.

So are you saying when Ethereum did ICO it was not decentralised? And you do realise this will have its own blockchain and only reason there needs to be a blockchain is "decentralisation".

Ethereum didn't even exist when it ICO'd, neither in code or in blockchain.

> is this even decentralized?

not in the least

Note that the $/coin scale was exponential during the ICO and private. Essentially premined by well-connected vcs.

Similar to startups before reaching IPO but much faster.

All coins in presale were sold at a fixed price, will be same for second round then on curve for future tokens

Does it say in the document who the investors are? How did you know they are VCs?

Not the parent, but I suppose it's safe to assume that VCs populate most large deals in tech. He also said 'per the SEC filing', so his source could be that.

With that said, Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov, is a Russian entrepreneur and of the $850m from 81 investors, an entire $300m was invested by a well-known oligarch in the country, Roman Abramovich.

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