1 Billion Dollar Telegram ICO - Is It Fake?

The "1 Billion Dollar" Telegram ICO has already raised $850m via the "crypto" market, leading many people to identify that it's either going to be one of the most successful blockchain projects, or one of the biggest failures in tech history.

Unfortunately, it looks like the latter may be the case.

The reality is that if you're looking at something like this, you have to ask yourself "what makes it worth $1bn"? PayPal sold to eBay for $1bn. By definition, this new app should have the capacity to deliver a similar level of value to the market.

Nope.

The "Telegram" idea is that it's an application that's designed to provide a blockchain-powered messaging system. The fact it's built on Blockchain means that it's 100% secure and able to provide users with confidentiality unsupported by other systems.

Whilst this sounds good on paper, the simple fact is that if you're looking at this logically, you have to ask yourself why it needs so much money just to launch. The answer is it doesn't. It's a publicity stunt to try and make the system "look" legitimate (when it patently isn't).

There's a theory in the investment world called the "greater fool theory". This states that no matter how bad an asset is, if a "greater fool" is willing to buy it off you, it will continue to rise in price. This means that if you're looking at getting involved with this ICO, you basically need to be able to find any of the reasons why it may be effective, or why it may be a fraud.

The underlying reality with Telegram is that its likely not going to succeed. White elephants like this never do; they provide a nice set of headlines & the founders look busy for a few months / years, but in the end - no one really cares about the product itself. They just care about being involved in the "crypto" space.

This is why most people have labelled Telegram a fake, and in some cases a fraud. It's like the Tesla stock in the stock market; the company has barely turned a profit but has a massive stock valuation because of the story behind it. This not only makes the company look successful, but gives them capital to work with.

There have been a number of issues pertaining to the way in which the ICO will likely not succeed, from the underlying company's technical capabilities to the people involved with the system being unable to effectively promote it.

We've found that if you're looking at getting the most out of the system, you really need to examine its technical potential, and then make a decision based off that. Most people will not do this, and will therefore end up with a very lacklustre and ineffective product - likely losing their original investment.

To get around this, you need to make sure that any time you buy a product through the ICO system, you are doing so because you genuinely believe in its underlying technical capabilities, NOT its hype and speculation.