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$1.6 Billion: Telegram ICO Ups the Ante for Record-Setting Token Presale

$1. 6 billion: telegram ico ups the ante for record-setting token presale

$1.6 Billion: Telegram ICO Ups the Ante for Record-Setting Token Presale

$1. 6 billion: telegram ico ups the ante for record-setting token presale
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The first multibillion-dollar token sale may be just around the corner — if reports about the Telegram ICO are to be believed, that is.

Having just concluded a record-setting $850 million ICO presale, Telegram — the encrypted messaging application created by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov — has sent prospective investors an email informing them that the firm will hold a second private presale, according to a report in tech outlet The Verge.

Citing anonymous sources, the publication said that the second round of the Telegram ICO presale is expected to raise nearly as much as the first one, netting the firm a total raise of more than $1.6 billion — all before the ICO even opens to the public.

But although Telegram does not appear to have any trouble attracting capital to its token sale, many traditional cryptoasset investors are remaining on the sidelines.

Pantera Capital, which was founded in 2013 and describes itself as the first US bitcoin investment firm, declined to participate in the Telegram ICO, citing reservations about the project’s lack of transparency.

“It’s very important in blockchain technology and specifically cryptocurrencies that you be very open with what you’re trying to do and have as many people as possible looking at it to see if they can find a flaw,” said Charles Noyes, a quantitative analyst at Pantera. “When you operate the way they do, which is closed, with secrecy, not subjecting yourself to peer review, you basically open yourself up to the possibility that there is a trivial bug in it that destroys the network.”

Other investment firms have expressed concern about vastly different figures that Telegram has given when discussing how much it intends to raise through the ICO, a stark difference from most projects. The second round of the presale, for instance, caught many investors by surprise.

Developers, meanwhile, have conveyed a great deal of skepticism about Telegram’s ability to achieve the goals it has laid out for the Telegram Open Network (TON), including its claim that the network will process 1 million transactions per second.

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Published at Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:11:53 +0000

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Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency

Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency

Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, was allegedly hacked today to the tune of $31 million.

Tether functions to convert U.S. dollars to a type of cryptocurrency. The project’s token (USDT) is pegged to the dollar and is used in exchange trading. The idea behind Tether is that instead of having to sell your bitcoin or other token for a fiat currency, you can convert it to USDT, and either hold it in USDT or else transfer your USDT to another exchange and use it to purchase tokens there.

As for the exchanges, USDT allows them to trade in something akin to dollars, without requiring them to have a bank account.

Tether operates on the “Omni Layer Protocol,” which itself operates on top of the bitcoin network, and uses bitcoin addresses. According to a blog post on the project’s website, $31 million worth of USDT was sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address on November 19, 2017.

In the blog post, Tether also noted it released a new version of the Omni Core software used by exchanges and wallets to support USDT transactions, thus implementing a temporary hard fork to the Omni Layer. As a result, the affected tokens are frozen in place, making them essentially worthless to the hacker.

“We strongly urge all Tether integrators to install this software immediately to prevent the coins from entering the ecosystem,” Tether wrote, adding that “any tokens from the attacker’s addresses will not be redeemed.”

Some exchanges, like Kraken, have stopped trading USDT temporarily while they upgrade to the newer software.

The heist was made in three separate USDT transfers out of Tether’s core Treasury wallet in the amounts of 23,000,000; 7,900,000; and 500,000 USDT. It is unclear why the hacker did not move all of the money out at once.

In addition to the other exchanges it trades on, USDT is widely traded on Bitfinex, an exchange that lost 119,756 BTC (worth $72 million at the time) in a hack that took place a year and a half ago.

News of the Tether attack comes at a time when some — notably the blogger “Bitfinex’ed” — are questioning whether USDTs are being issued without backing of actual U.S. dollars. Similarly, there has been growing speculation that Tether is being used in possible market manipulation to drive up the price of bitcoin.

The current market cap value of USDT is around $673 million. If that money is backed by real reserves, as Tether claims, the project would need to have at least that much in its bank account in Taiwan.

Tether publishes a bank account balance on its website’s Transparency page and claims the money is redeemable for U.S. dollars at any time directly through the Tether platform.

The project’s website has been up and down sporadically, since the hack. An archive of the site is available here.

The post Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

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