Last week, upon expiration of the TON launch timeline on April 30th, Telegram sent a letter to TON investors offering them the option to keep their investment with the company for another year.
As a gesture of good faith and trust, Telegram was promising to repay them 110% of their initial investments in either the promised Gram tokens or any other token deemed appropriate as and when the TON network launches.
Crypto-Economy reported at the time that if investors were unsupportive of the offer, they would receive 72% of their initial investment as agreed back in October last year.
A new letter sent to investors on Monday seems to revise these terms. As reported by Russia news agency RBC on May 4th, Telegram has now excluded US TON investors from last week’s offer citing the current challenges with the US financial markets regulator the SEC.
In the letter, seen by RBC reporters and whose legitimacy was confirmed by TON investors, Telegram has told its US investors that they will not be extended the offer to receive back their investments in the Gram tokens or any other token for that matter.
This implies that the US investors who choose to keep their investments with Telegram will receive their money back in fiat – albeit they will receive the 110% return on investment.
“Unfortunately, based on later discussions with the relevant authorities and our lawyer, we made the difficult decision not to use the option associated with Gram or another cryptocurrency, due to the uncertain attitude of the regulatory authorities in the United States,” Telegram explained in the letter.
As explained to TON investors last week, Telegram was still engaged in “discussions with the relevant authorities in connection with TON and the issuance of tokens to the original purchasers. If we obtain the relevant permissions prior to April 30, 2021, purchasers who opted for the loan will have the further option to receive Grams or potentially another cryptocurrency on the same terms as those in their original Purchase Agreements (to the extent allowed by applicable regulatory restrictions).”
The loan terms referenced in this quote refer to the option presented to the TON investors to keep their investment with the company for another year which Telegram will consider a loan towards the company from the investors.
The issuance of Gram tokens to US investors became the challenge for the launch of TON last year when SEC claimed that the company was issuing unregistered securities. The SEC went to court to stop the issuance and consequently the launch of TON. The courts sided with the SEC and asked Telegram not to issue the Gram tokens to any investor including non-US investors.
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