According to a filing
with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the Chinese
company The9 Ltd bought 5,297,257 tokens during a Telegram initial token
offering in January 2018 for $2 million dollars. The filing also states
that The9 has invested in multiple blockchain-based companies as of
2018.
According to a report
by Russian business news agency RBC on July 24, this document is
evidence of The9 as the first publicly-known foreign investor. Per RBC,
Telegram’s initial coin offering (ICO) investors are largely unknown.
During
the first ICO, 81 investors contributed to raise a total of $850
million, but only three out of the 81’s identities are known. These are
reportedly Sergey Solonin, David Yakobashvili and a TMT Investments
venture fund co-founded by German Kaplun and Alexander Morgulchik. RBC
remarks that Telegram raised $850 million in its second ICO, but the
identity of those investors remains wholly unknown to the public.
Additionally,
as per the report, the tokens sold for $0.38 in the first round, while
the token price rose from $1.10 to $1.45 in the second ICO round.
The9
Ltd designs and distributes games online. In the early 2000s it was
reportedly the exclusive distributor of World of Warcraft in China. The
firm was founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Zhu Jun, who reportedly holds
over 80% of the firm’s voting shares.
As previously reported
by Cointelegraph, South Korea’s Gram Asia launched an event to sell the
rights to its Gram tokens at $4.00 per token on the Japanese crypto
exchange Liquid. However, a Telegram investor pointed out that this
appears to violate Telegram’s investor contract, which reportedly says:
“ENTER
INTO ANY swap or other AGREEMENT THAT TRANSFERS, in whole or in part,
ANY OF THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF OWNERSHIP OF THE INVESTMENT CONTRACT
represented by this Purchase Agreement or any Tokens.”
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