Telegram with Offices in UAE sells its token at three times their ICO price

South Korea’ Gram Asia is selling its rights to Gram holdings beginning July 10 at $4 per token, up three times from its original price, according to Bloomberg. During Gram’s second initial offering (ICO) last March 2018, the price per coin was only $1.33. Notably, the current price is also nearly 1000% higher than the $0.38 reached on the company’s first ICO.

Gram is the yet-to-be-released native coin for the Telegram Open Network (TON), which is a decentralized network project built by encrypted messenger app Telegram. The unreleased coin can be used in different TON services, including payments for blockchain services, bypassing censorship, and hiding identity and IP addresses.

As per the report, the token sale is currently being conducted exclusively via the Japanese crypto exchange Liquid. A discount of $0.50 per Gram will reportedly be given to buyers who will pay using Liquid’s cryptocurrency QASH. Other currencies accepted are USDC and USD. The delivery of the Gram tokens will start after the launch of TON in four equal-sized tranches in over an 18-month period. However, the pre-ordered Grams, which will eventually be made available outside of TON, will appear in the buyer’s Liquid wallet.

“All buyer funds from the sale will be converted to USDC and kept in a segregated wallet under escrow until the Gram tokens are delivered,” as stated on Liquid’s website. The service, which has 260 million active users, is expecting to release its Gram token by the third quarter of this year.

Mike Kayamori, co-founder and CEO of Liquid in previous interviews, clarified that Liquid entered into a deal with Gram Asia, not Telegram. He also said that Gram Asia was involved in the TON project as an incubator.

Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram has opened an office for Telegram in the UAE to avoid taxes in 2017. The office is on the 23^rd floor of one of the skyscrapers in Dubai Media City. Durov has told Bloomberg  “it’s a matter of principle” (and a way to save a whole load of cash).A lot of people in the western world don’t realize how much taxes limit their options. You can end up paying almost half of your income in taxes, which basically means you’re working for the government 180 days a year. I think I can find better ways to use the money to benefit society,” he added.

Durov aims to enable transaction speeds faster than the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains and may seek to compete with Visa and Mastercard, according to company documents. Grams are planned to be used to pay for different services on TON blockchain, including user applications, decentralized data storage and bypassing censorship.