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June 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Back then, investors were immediately sold
on the concept of a blockchain that will offer higher transaction speed than the most popular Bitcoin network, while also able to compete with Mastercard and Visa payment systems and offer lower transaction fees than those for the existing cryptocurrencies. TON's target audience was projected to exceed 200mn users.
By the next March, the Durov brothers were able to raise $1.7bn in two private rounds of the ICO for the Gram token.
In July 2018, as a possible step towards TON, Telegram introduced a personal identification service, Telegram Passport, protected by end-to- end encryption. Intended for platforms requiring real-life identification, the service requests that users upload their identification documents, such as passports and ID cards, which are later redirected to a relevant platform, while Telegram has no access to the data and can only handle them with users' permission.
Although shrouded in secrecy, TON has provided
fodder for great expectations and grave fears, and the latter might be behind Telegram's spat with Russian authorities a year ago over refusal to share encryption keys with the FSB.
While the conflict seemed unavoidable, given Durov's ardent advocacy of online privacy and Russian authorities' recent attempts at control- ling the internet, there were reports that Russian secret services were actually scared of TON as it could "compromise" the country's national security."
Last year, at the height of the Telegram contro- versy, Russian business daily RBC published an internal memo from an FSB officer, in which he allegedly told colleagues that the conflict was not about "the [encryption] keys " but about fears that TON could create an "absolutely uncontrollable" financial system in Russia.
Incidentally, Durov recently criticised Telegram's competitor, instant messaging service WhatsApp, pointing to its security problems that can allow secret services to use the application to spy
for users.
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