Shanghai The9 Ltd invested $2 million in the blockchain project of Pavel Durov during the ICO held in 2018. This is the first publicly known foreign investor of the project.
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The Chinese company The9 Ltd during the closed ICO (initial coin offering the initial placement of cryptocurrency coins) of Pavel Durov's Telegram's blockchain project invested $2 million in it in 2018. It is said in the company's report posted on the website of The United States Securities and Exchange Commission in late June.
According to the materials of the company, for this amount it bought more than 5.297 million tokens of Telegram Inc., which will be released in 2019. Thus, the price per 1 token during the transaction was about $0.38. It was this price for the token that Telegram set during the first investment round, which allowed the company to raise $850 million. 81 investors took part in it, but only three of them were known before. The founder of Qiwi, Sergey Solonin, reported that he had invested $17 million in the company, the founder of Wimm-Bill-Dann, David Yakobashvili, $10 million, and the TMT Investments venture fund created by German Kaplun and Alexander Morgulchik, $300 thousand. All other investors were not disclosed.
During the second ICO round Telegram raised another $850 million, but the price for the token was higher and ranged from $1.1 to $1.45. The names of investors who participated in the second round were also not disclosed.