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In a message dated May 12 Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov announced that after a long struggle with the SEC, his company officially terminates its participation in the TON and Gram projects which were launched back in 2017. He also said that 96% of the world's inhabitants depend on the United States in terms of Finance and Technology. “We made a difficult decision not to continue working on TON. I am writing this post to officially announce the Telegram’s active participation in ton is over,” said Durov.

The work on the creation of TON block chain platform has been carried out for the last 2.5 years and the project itself should have received the name Gram. Pavel Durov calls the decision of the American court paradoxical. Because they forbade the distribution of cryptocurrency not only in the United States but throughout the world. After all, as US residents may find an illegal way to access the platform in another country, this judgment implies that others countries do not have sovereignty to decide what is good and what is bad for their own citizens. “If the US suddenly decided to ban coffee and demanded that coffee shops in Italy be closed because some Americans could come there, we doubt that anyone would agree.” He also noted that the US can use its control over Apple and Google to remove apps from the App Store in Google Play. So, yes, it's true that other countries do not have full sovereignty in what they can be allowed on their territory.  Telegram versus SEC seems like this is a complete failure of Telegram in the long-standing legal fight against the SEC. The SEC filed a lawsuit against the company in October 2019 – a few days before the planned launch of TON. In the lawsuit the regulator accused Telegram of violating the US Securities Act by conducting an ICO of $ 1.7 billion in 2018. In March 2020 a US court stated that the SEC could well prove that Gram is unregistered securities. On April 30^th Pavel Durov proposed a compensation plan for investors, apparently given such a court decision. [launch done without Durov]

If you didn’t follow then, Telegram at the beginning of 2018 announced the launch plan for the TON blockchain platform. Telegram Group Inc and its subsidiary TON Issuer Inc. sold 2.9 bln tokens and raised $1.7 bln. The first launch date is October 2019 but the SEC has secured a temporary injunction. As a result, Durov promised to return part of the attracted resources. Investors agreed to postpone the launch date till April 30th 2020 and on March 24th the New York District Court recognized Gram as a security and temporarily banned the transfer of tokens to original buyers including 175 investors.

 Two weeks later the TON development team (without Durov) launched its Free TON network using software developments made earlier by the brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov.

Choose the right answer:                1a 2a 3d 4c 5b 6b 7b

1. The SEC stated that Pavel Durov had issued a security called Gram

1. Yes
2. No
3. Not given

2. Gram is not properly registered, according to the SEC

1. Yes
2. No
3. Not given

3. The SEC banned the ICO of Gram all around the world

1. To prevent US citizens from buying Gram in other countries
2. To prevent Durov from launching TON in any country
3. Because they have enough authority to do that
4. All of the above

4. According to Durov, Americans enjoy total democracy and freedom in their investment decisions

1. No
2. Yes
3. Not given

5. Durov thinks that other countries have full-fledged sovereignty

1. Yes
2. Not
3. Not given

6. What is Durov going to do with the investors’ money, attracted earlier?

1. He is going to return them all their money
2. He is about to reimburse them partially
3. He has reinvested their money into a new project – Free TON

7. Free TON is

1. The same project
2. a different project running on the same code
3. Durov’s ace in the hole (козырь в рукаве)

Translate the following into English using prompts in brackets. For information about how to translate Russian Participles with the suffix -вш- please watch my video below

Впервые о планах Павла Дурова по запуску собственной блокчейн-платформы TON стало известно в декабре 2017 г.( to get known)  Об этом сообщил посвященный криптовалюте блог Cointelegraph, а затем информацию, ссылаясь на свои неназванные источники, подтвердил авторитетный ресурс TechCrunch.

Первое официальное подтверждение (confirmation) ведущейся разработки (the ongoing development) TON появилось в начале 2018 г. В январе и феврале 2018 г. проведя (to carry out) два раунда инвестиций, Дуров привлек в общей сложности (a total of)  $1,7 млрд. В число вложившихся в TON инвесторов, как сообщал CNews, вошли крупные российские бизнесмены и политики, включая бывшего министра по вопросам открытого правительства (the former Minister for Open Government Affairs) Михаила Абызова. Сумма его вложений составила $20 млн.( to amount to)

Еще один российский миллиардер, оказавшийся среди инвесторов проекта, был Роман Абрамович – суммарный размер его вложений составил $10 млн. К нему присоединился и Михаил Гуцериев, вложивший в проект $15 млн. Длинный список инвесторов пополнил и генеральный директор немецкой платежной системы Wirecard Ян Марселек (Jan Marcalek), инвестировавший $7 млн. Дуров также привлек деньги сооснователя Qiwi Сергея Солонина (вложил $17 млн) и сооснователя компании «Вимм-билль-данн» Давида Якобашвили ($10 млн).