A New York judge has ruled that the injunction barring Telegram from issuing its Gram tokens extends to all entities in the United State and overseas. On April 1, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel, responded to the encrypted messaging firm’s request for clarification as to the scope of the court’s March 24 preliminary injunction. He denied Telegram’s move to distribute tokens to the non-US-based participants of its 2018 initial coin offering (ICO). Approximately $1.27 billion of the funds raised to finance the development of the Telegram Open Network (TON) came from overseas-based investors Judge Castel sides with SEC The …

Former NASDAQ vice president and assistant general counsel warned the TON Community against launching Telegram’s blockchain network until the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has its say. Safe Harbor is not on SEC’s agenda Manny Alicandro, a New York City lawyer with vast experience in traditional finance as well as in cases involving crypto assets, shared his concerns about the drastic plan put forward by the TON Community with Cointelegraph. He noted that in the foreseeable future, all issuers have to respect the Howey test. This may only change: “... if the Three-year Safe Harbor proposal by Commissioner Peirce …

How far can a preliminary injunction from an American court reach? The answer to that question is everything for Telegram’s embattled TON blockchain project. TON has been under legal fire since shortly after the SEC became aware of its token sale. The drama is ongoing as recently as this week, when a federal district court judge issued a preliminary injunction against Telegram for its ten-figure initial coin offering. The allegation is that Telegram’s GRAM token, operating on the TON blockchain, was illegally being sold as a security, and the judge effectively took the SEC’s side on the case. Filing an …

Developers of the TON blockchain are still considering deployment, despite injunctive ruling by the U.S. court. Fedor Skuratov, a spokesperson for TON Community Foundation, a community of TON developers, told Cointelegraph that the recent unfavorable decisions by the U.S. court did not catch them by surprise: “The community was ready for this (or another) scenario. We have several options, including the launch of TON by TCF [TON Community Foundation]. I will say more, no one (no one) can prevent the launch of TON by any other entity, person or community, cause TON is a decentralized open-source solution. Already, there are …

Telegram is seeking to appeal a United States federal court’s recent ruling in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission to halt distribution of GRAM tokens. Rejection of the injunction and the status of the investment contracts In response to the court’s preliminary injunction earlier the same day freezing GRAM issuance until at least the trial, Telegram filed a brief notice of appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The injunction itself tentatively agrees with the SEC’s argument that the contracts governing GRAM issuance — though critically, not necessarily GRAM tokens themselves — seem to qualify as …

The Russian communications watchdog has launched an offensive on censorship resistant platforms, including the Telegram Open Network (TON) and privacy browser Tor. Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media — better known as Roskomnadzor — published a notice on March 3 seeking to engage contractors to research and block “anonymous darknet networks” hosting content deemed “extremist” or “restricted”. The Russian-language crypto news outlet Forklog first reported the call for contractors, after it was published by Russia’s General Radio Frequency Center. Roskomnadzor cracks down on anonymous networks Official documents list anonymous protocols, mesh networks, and Internet-of-Things …

Newly published court documents reveal that an anonymous venture capital firm identified as “Investor F” sought to have evidence redacted from the first court hearing for the dispute between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Telegram. On Feb, 18, Investor F asserted that emails directly requested by the SEC contain “confidential and commercially sensitive documents” detailing the firm's strategic considerations regarding prospective cryptocurrency investments and custody solutions. The request states that the firm operates in a “highly competitive market” in which “discussions about investment strategy are commercially sensitive.” Investor F sought that the SEC be permitted to …

Following a two-hour hearing, a New York federal judge has extended the restraining order that prohibits Telegram from distributing its Gram tokens. On Feb 19, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York reserved judgment on the US Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC)’s request for a preliminary injunction regarding Telegram’s 2019 Gram sale. The SEC believes that the Gram token - which the company described as a utility token for the forthcoming Telegram Open Network (TON) - is a security. The regulator shut down Telegram’s ICO last October and an injunction from …

A group of international Telegram Open Network (TON) contributors have submitted a court document criticizing United States regulators’ line of attack against the project. The group has formed a non-profit association, “The TON Community Foundation,” and collectively submitted the brief on Feb. 14 in the form of an amicus curiae. An amicus curiae is a brief that offers expertise or insight into a given case on behalf of an entity that is not formally party to the case itself — i.e. an entity that is neither a plaintiff, defendant, nor legal counsel for either side. The court can decide whether …

2019 was one hell of a year for Pavel Durov. The serial entrepreneur announced and made moves to release the Telegram Open Network, or TON — the blockchain associated with his Telegram messaging app. The idea of TON is to allow users to go beyond simply sending messages and emojis to each other, by using the app’s underlying infrastructure to transact a cryptocurrency called Gram in a completely trustless and secure manner. But the United States Securities and Exchange Commission had other plans for the launch of Telegram’s new blockchain product, filing an emergency restraining order in October in an …

This is the second article in our series on integrating payment channels on Telegram Open Network. In the first part, we introduced the network, detailed our experience of the contest, and explained how synchronous and asynchronous smart contracts work. As the next addition to the series, this article details how we built a synchronous payment channel on the network during TON’s contest back in September. Here, we will be talking only about Fift (TON’s general-purpose programming language) and FunC (TON’s programming language for writing smart contracts). The TON white paper provides more in-depth information about payment channels, but we will …

In the latest from U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ongoing lawsuit against Telegram for its offering of Gram tokens, the commission bashes the messaging service’s blockchain and related token. In a lengthy filing with the court of the Southern District of New York the SEC responded to Telegram’s earlier motion for summary judgment. In it, the SEC disparaged the Telegram Open Network (TON) — Telegram’s blockchain — as well as the operation’s Gram (GRM) token. “Telegram Has Put Forth No Evidence Regarding the TON Blockchain’s State of Development at Launch,” the Jan. 21, 2020 document reads, adding, “Telegram Marketed …