[TELEGRAM ICO] “You’re Invited to the Greatest Scam ICO of All Time!”

*Original posting is at official Medium official page of Blockchain Investment.
https://medium.com/blockchain-investment/youre-invited-to-the-greatest-scam-ico-of-all-time-d7ec7ed40b96

“You’re Invited to the Greatest Scam ICO of All Time!”

Part1. The Unbelievably Charming Telegram’s 22 Trillion Won ICO

Let us not forget that a well-planned operation begins with properly chumming the waters. Wouldn’t the most effective bait be the well-trusted media?

OK — let’s have a go at confirming the fake marketing of the worldwide distinguished media on Telegram’s ICO.

On March 4th, the New York Times ran a big headline stating, “Virtual Currency Offerings May Hit a New Peak with Telegram Coin Sale”.

[ New York Times, March 4, 2018 ][1]

‘Telegram’s supercharged fund-raising has become the most visible and perhaps most lucrative example of an I.C.O. The company has taken in $850 million over the past two months from some of the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, and it is now aiming to raise another $850 million over the next month or so. A third $850 million round is in the works after that, according to documents associated with the offering.’
On March 1st, the financial journal Bloomberg also reported Telegram’s ICO success in attracting a large following, conveying the hot atmosphere and alluding to the company having almost reached an investment attraction sum of $850 million. As is customary with financial journals, it was reported in a way that let the reader vividly feel the investment craze.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/technology/telegram-initial-coin-offering.html

[ Bloomberg Technology, March 1, 2018 ] [2]

‘Telegram Group Inc., an encrypted-messaging service that just raised $850 million from selling rights to virtual coins, is tripling the price in its next funding round, according to people familiar with the matter.’
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/telegram-said-to-triple-price-in-largest-initial-coin-offering

[ Bloomberg Markets, January 18, 2018 ][3]

‘Encrypted messaging service Telegram raised the target for the largest initial coin offering ever to $2 billion, defying a rout in traded cryptocurrencies, according to potential investors.’
[3]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/biggest-ico-ever-is-said-to-grow-as-telegram-targets-2-billion

[Financial Times, January 26, 2018] [4]

‘Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital have each told the company they want to invest $20m, according to three people with knowledge of the deals.’
[4] https://www.ft.com/content/790d9506-0175-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5

The worldwide financial press company the Financial Times also reported news on Telegram’s ICO, but a few suspicious aspects were discovered.

The above is from the article “Silicon Valley investors line up to back Telegram ICO” published on January 26th, 2018. However, upon examination, it is excessively difficult to tell who exactly is in line.

‘Sequoia and Kleiner declined to comment, and Benchmark did not respond to requests for comment.’
Sequoia, Klainer, and Benchmark were asked, but all of them declined to comment or gave no response to requests for comment. In other words, they were themselves acknowledging that they had written articles with no basis and without hearing any responses pertaining to Telegram’s participation in an ICO from anywhere at all.

Looking at only the title and the nuance, once would likely think that the ICO was on the rise. However, taking a more in-depth look allows one to see the context, which leaves plenty of room for doubt.

One more suspicious aspect was also found.

The text below was written in the Financial Times and is a direct quote from a white paper on the TON coin, which had claimed to be partaking in Telegram’s ICO. A screenshot of the 6th page of the white paper is shown below.

It’s exactly the same as the content of the article. It’s already making the judgment that Telegram is planning what is being planned in the white paper, but whether this is suitable or not will be explained in greater detail following the text you’ve just read.

Just like this, the current situation is one in which Telegram’s ICO is being used as a fait accompli in various different forms of media. Furthermore, there has been no act of strong, public disavowment with regard to these media reports from the side of Telegram.

Part2. Shall we fall into the Telegram scam together?
We’ll start with the conclusion. As of March 27th, 2018, every one of the websites that exist online presently and say they will partake in Telegram’s ICO is a scam.

• If the Telegram ICO mentioned in this text is the true official ICO, please contact us. We will immediately acknowledge our supposition as having been incorrect.

With that said, however, a significantly elaborate doubting process was necessary to arrive at this conclusion. That’s how elaborate the technology of the scam is. Cryptocurrencies are decentralizing the entire economic system at a high speed, however what fate has in store is cryptocurrency’s rate of evolution going down the same track as the scams’ rate of evolution. The reason for this is the desire of humans. The game of hide-and-seek between those with ill intentions who aim to deceive and investors blinded by their desire will continue along with the progression of technology.

Step #1. Let’s Take a Look at the Telegram ICO Website

Searching for the Telegram ICO website on Google will bring up a website that appears as the second result from the top. This is ico.telegram.org. First off, this website’s name appears strikingly similar to the address of Telegram’s official website, http://telegram.org/, so one naturally trusts it.

Of course, no matter how much searching one does, it is impossible to find the connecting link between Telegram’s official website and the ICO page in question.

Step #2. Let us peruse the ICO homepage.

Now that we’ve found the homepage, it would be customary to thoroughly comprehend what’s on it, from top to bottom.

What sticks out at the very top is a countdown clock. It starts at 5 hours and goes down by 1 second the moment you log in.

A countdown UX is necessary to stimulate the greed of investors. It makes them nervous by giving the impression that they must join up right away. It experimentally closes one window and newly opens another. Interestingly, it always indicates there being 5 hours left until the deadline. In fact, even just this one test can be used to determine with absolute certainty that this website is a scam. (However, the majority of people holding an extreme lack of doubt is the reason the scam can succeed.)

Let’s take a quick look into the higher powers leading this ICO, then.

As expected! The CEO of Telegram (Pavel Durov)’s picture is set up to look pretty cool. There’s even a detailed background on him. So can we trust this ICO yet? The Telegram CEO would never cheat us, right? This context makes users fall into this kind of certainty.

Let’s think about what’s necessary to make a fancy team in a scam ICO.

Copy a high-quality image of the Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from Google, paste it on the ICO page, and you’re done. It’s a scam anyway, but this an extremely easy feat for such a cool team with the best advisory members in the world, and it can be done in 10 minutes.

There’s one conclusion. If a celebrity from the team doesn’t promote the ICO in question in an official setting with their own mouth, it’s a scam. It is impossible to differentiate between reality and forgery by simply believing the content posted on the ICO’s website.

Out of innocent curiosity, we dug a bit more into the history of Pavel Durov. We were able to confirm that on, the ICO page, there is an officialy registered company in England, and the company’s CEO is reigistered as Mr. Pavel Durov. Text is written on the front page that confidently challengers viewers to try verifying whether the company is registered or not.

Not having yet satisfied our curiosity, we did as we were told and followed the link.

It was properly registered.

Click below:
company number 11229448 (UK company register companieshouse.gov.uk)

Click below:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11229448/officers

The registrant, of course, is Pavel Durov!

What’s funny is that he himself works as both the CEO and the secretary. There are precisely 2 employees, but they’re the same ones.

(Is this some kind of double personality thing?)

The part where the more careful touch can be felt is where it’s registered with an English person that accurately matches the birth year and even month the real Telegram CEO was born. However, the Telegram CEO is originally from a country called Saint Kitts and Nevis, not England. (Refer to the below Wiki source.)

Apparently, Pavel Durov left Russia in 2014 and acquired citizenship in a country called Saint Kitts and Nevis by investing $250,000 (wikipedia).

Upon leaving Russia, he obtained Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship through donating $250,000 to the country’s Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation, and secured US$300 million in cash within Swiss banks. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Durov)

This is our guess: The team leading this scam ICO has their base of operations in England, and they’ve absolutely brought in an English person born in the same month and year as the Telegram CEO to change the name and be the company representative while also registering the person as a secretary. Such meticulousness is worthy of praise.

If someone reading this is working at the building located at 91 Waterloo RD, Lambeth, London, United Kingdom, please drop us a line and let us know whether a corporation called ‘TELEGRAM OPEN NETWORK LIMITED’ exists.

Now that we’ve looked at the awesome team, let’s turn our eyes to the list of investors.

The logos of famous investors from the blockchain business world, including INBlockchain, BLOCKCHAIN CAPITAL, YUNBI, BITFONEX, FENBUSH CAPITAL, AURORA INVESTMENT ADVISORS, and HyperChain Capital, are embedded on the site. However, even if we go to the websites of these investment companies, Telegram is not included in the portfolio, and zero investment-related announcements whatsoever can be seen. Usually, investment companies will make public announcements regarding major investments. If this is not the case, one ought to be suspicious. What of the cool investment company logos on the website? This too, of course, can be sufficiently made with simple ‘copy and paste’ in 5 minutes.

If there is no doubting process as mentioned above, what is the general “incident flow” that one would go through?

1. Ah! Only 5 hours left?
2. Such a historical investment opportunity is open to me, too? Awesome!
   A flow of rumors and general nuance that this is being run in secret only to elect institutional investors or those with a reputation is created to induce judgment like this. (It was even analyzed in such a way in Forbes magazine)
3. This is an ICO that the Telegram founder and core team is betting everything on, so I can trust it.
4. Even the investors have worldwide prestige. I should line up with them, too.
5. Better pay with my Ethereum wallet!
6. Just 2 minutes until the transfer finishes — then it’s all done!
   In a flow of impatience like this, outside of looking at the information provided by the website, no efforts are made to carefully read white papers to look up outside reputations.

Our team stayed calm and carefully read the white paper. At 23 pages, it’s significant, and the design is also quite high-class and professional. You can feel that they’ve really invested their heart and soul into it, as Telegram does.

The message conveyed is also deeply appealing.

Telegram is being recreated as a far bigger ecosystem through its ICO. Even now, the influnce of Telegram on the cryptocurrency communities conversing through Telegram will be further enhanced, and we completely agree with the vision that Telegram’s cryptocurrency will exceed the Telegram ecosystem and evolve into a complete open ecosystem going forward. Furthermore, whether at the beginning or now, Telegram has always been running through non-profit foundations. As a result, the plan to draw a big picture using a non-profit foundation like the Etherium foundation feels mysterious. Yes. The white paper is littered with content that plucks at the heartstrings. The volition to technically achieve is fairly cosmic, however it’s Telegram, so one finds oneself believing they can pull it off. Ultimately, the remaining 5 hours feel far too short to scrupulously read these 23 pages. What more time is there to think it over?

We’re the careful type that remains in doubt regardless of this, and we thus tried seeking out the technical white paper. Huh? They haven’t posted it to the homepage. That’s a bit suspicious. However, Google has found the hidden technical white paper. “Do they just want to hide the technology?” one asks oneself, trying to rationalize it. First off, the quantity is overwhelming. About 130 pages. One wonders whether there will be such cool stuff inside if read while roughly following the table of contents.

Apparently they’ve solved most of the present problems with cryptocurrencies, and the cryptocurrency activity that gets published is apparently done at Telegram, where 200 million users swarm.

In times like these, where the white paper can be entrusted to and made by a subcontractor, it is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate between reality and forgery by only reading theoretical white papers. What’s actually happening is that there’s a high chance of scam white papers being packaged in a more cool and elaborate way.

To make a general review here,

we can evaluate this scam Telegram ICO as having been very meticulously planned out.

Even the worldwide leading press will have absolutely zero idea that this is a scam, even as we’re writing this right now. There isn’t even a way to tell how many cryptocurrency investors are falling into the trap of scam ICOs, which are growing more elaborate day by day. (This is because people are silent about losses.)

To clearly sum up with a final word of warning, all types of Telegram ICOs verified to your eyes currently are scams.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov wrote, “Telegram publishes its official announcements only at telegram.org.”

Durov has also clearly revealed that Telegram’s Gram ICO (gramtoken.io), which has been floating around on the news, is a scam on Twitter.

If the founder of Telegram warns you directly that it’s a scam, as seen above, and you don’t see it nor listen to it and get caught up in the scam, that will be due to your own avarice. What you need not to get caught in the scam’s trap is to put down any excessive greed and use the cold principles of investment, reasonable and meticulous doubt, and 360-degree reputation verification toward cryptocurrency.

Is your blood pumping? Do you feel like you have to invest?

Take a deep breath and have a glass of cold water.

Then, take a look the hard facts.

Don’t trust anything until you fully comprehend it.

P.S.: If the Telegram ICO mentioned in this text is the true official ICO, please contact us. We will immediately acknowledge our supposition as having been incorrect.

[About Blockchain Investment]
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