Telegram abandons the TON blockchain project after its SEC battle
Telegram abandons its Telegram Open Network project after legal battle with the SEC, viewed as a win for Bitcoin as another corporate crypto project fails.
On May 12, 2020, Telegram abandons the TON blockchain project after its SEC battle. Telegram abandons its Telegram Open Network project after legal battle with the SEC, viewed as a win for Bitcoin as another corporate crypto project fails.
After months of litigation and a court ruling that sided with the SEC, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the company would not launch TON and would return funds to investors. For the Bitcoin community, Telegram's failure represented another validation of Bitcoin's decentralized architecture and another example of why corporate-controlled cryptocurrency projects struggled under regulatory scrutiny.
Telegram had raised enormous amounts of capital and had the technical capabilities to build sophisticated blockchain infrastructure, but these advantages couldn't overcome the fundamental problem that a centralized entity behind a cryptocurrency made it vulnerable to regulatory action. The SEC could sue Telegram, obtain court orders stopping the project, and ultimately force its abandonment because there was a company and identifiable people who could be held accountable.