Telegram said it has been in talks with the SEC about TON "for the past 18 months"

Telegram has responded to a recent court order by the Securities Exchange Commission in a letter to investors in its token sale. 

According to a letter reviewed by The Block, the messaging app told its token investors that they are "surprised and disappointed that the SEC chose to file the lawsuit." The SEC claims the company sold unregistered securities.

Telegram says, however, that it has tried to communicate with the regulator and solicit feedback over the past 18 months regarding its TON blockchain project. In its suit, the SEC said it asked Telegram to respond to an administrative subpoena and it refused to do so.  In part because of this refusal, the SEC said that it had no choice but to file suit.

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On Friday, the SEC sued Telegram and its subsidiary TON Issuer for allegedly conducting an unregistered securities sales last year. The company raised over $1.7 billion from the sales and promised to deliver tokens by Oct. 31.

Now, Telegram is telling its investors that it will "take a break" in order to receive more clarity on the legal status of the TON project and its Gram tokens. In the letter, the company said that they are assessing whether they need to delay the launch of TON, which was originally set to go live by Oct. 31. 

Bloomberg first reported the story.
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About Author

Celia joined The Block as a reporter after earning her BA in the History of Science from the University of Chicago. Having spent years pondering over why 2+2 cannot equal 5, she is interested in the history and philosophy of mathematics, computation, and cryptography. She also had a very brief stint at Crunchbase News.