In a surprise move, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late Friday secured an emergency restraining order against the Telegram Group and its subsidiary TON Issuer for the $1.7 billion token sale that occured in 2018.
Essentially the regulator is claiming that Telegram did not register its private offer or sale for gram tokens with the US authority, although a Form D disclosure filed with the SEC in March 2018.
With Telegram and TON continuing to work on rolling out the gram token to the public, with some indications that the token would go live by the end of October 2019 it is now unclear if such plans will be delayed.
Likewise, it’s important to note that of the $1.7 billion that has already been raised through the private sale of the token, over 1 billion of the tokens were sold to US investors. It is also unclear how this regulatory move will impact their investment into the TON blockchain project.