
Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency - zillionize
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/telegram-open-network/
======
Maro
What's the value of the in-app currency being a cryptocurrency (putting aside
hype/pr), vs calling it a virtual currency, a Mysql database with a API on
top?

Dropping to a technical level, if the miners are all run by Telegram, then I
think it's just a pointless overhead over Mysql. On the other hand, if anybody
can run miners, I don't comprehend what value that adds, what it means.

~~~
lakechfoma
I see this same thing happening at some corporations now trying to create
blockchain as a service. If one corporation, or just a few, are the only ones
participating in the chain then why not just use traditional DBs?..

~~~
rando444
The main reason is because you can't edit a blockchain.

With a database there's always ways around editing the data if you own the
entire system.

With a blockchain it's not possible to edit the data without replacing the
entire chain.

~~~
oh_sigh
You could still use merkle trees it similar technology in your own database
and publish checkpoint hashes of the DB every so often

~~~
woah
At some point you will just be implementing your own half-assed blockchain
because you "don't need a blockchain". Why?

~~~
lozenge
Because git is easy and proven and a blockchain is complicated.

------
ajcodez
Telegram is hugely popular in the cryptocurrency community to the point that
multiple traders I know monitor Telegram community engagement as a primary
indicator to bet on small cap coins.

Telegram founder is also big into cryptocurrency and owns a bunch of bitcoin
[1]. I think after kik [2] and Status [3] this was inevitable.

[1]:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-12/cryptic-r...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-12/cryptic-
russian-crusader-says-his-5-billion-app-can-t-be-bought)

[2]: [http://www.kinecosystem.org/](http://www.kinecosystem.org/)

[3]: [https://status.im/](https://status.im/)

------
bflesch
I don't understand: Wouldn't Apple just remove their app from the app once
they touch payments? Someone will be bitten by compliance, and if Telegram is
able to circumvent that then the bucket stops with Apple.

This is what has stopped me from doing payment in my apps until now - you
never know when some apple or google employee decides to smash you in the face
with the ban hammer.

~~~
frabcus
I don't really understand the Apple policy on payments.

How come, for example, they don't demand their cut from Monzo person to person
transfers?

~~~
nihonde
Isn’t Apple only seeking a cut of sales of digital goods? You can sell
physical merchandise like a real book, but you can’t sell an ebook without
cutting them in.

~~~
weavie
I thought surely you can buy ebooks on the Kindle app for iOS. But a quick
search and you are right - nope, you cannot buy books on the Kindle app for
iOS. The option just isn't there.

~~~
jonknee
And you can't even present a link to purchase digital goods through a
browser... You can open Mobile Safari and search Amazon for a Kindle book, but
you can't use an Amazon app of any sort to do part of it.

~~~
tzahola
Weird, considering the fact that the Bandcamp app lets you buy music digitally
via PayPal. Am I missing some important difference between the two?

~~~
jonknee
I just downloaded Bandcamp for iOS and under Digital Album I see "Not
available for purchase on this device" along with links to purchase the
physical vinyl or CD.

~~~
tzahola
Hm, you’re right. I didn’t notice it but the album I tried it was “digital
download _\+ limited edition print_ ”... mea culpa.

------
vazamb
I am a happy user of Telegram but I don't think re-inventing ethereum with a
small team of developers is a great idea. But then again, using existing tech
gives you fewer opportunities for cash grabs...

~~~
donquichotte
Strange decision indeed, they could use one of the existing technologies like
Ripple or Stellar.

~~~
samat
We are talking about people who rolled their own crypto and their own binary
protocol for messenger app in 201*, after all.

~~~
eitland
So far they've even got away with it.

I don't pretend it is secure and listening to HN I've been halfway expecting a
huge flaw to show up but so far, -nothing.

------
fsiefken
Integrating cryptocurrency within an easy to use chat environment has added
value. Gitlab and Github have chatops, irc had chatops for ages, there were
bots for twitter... chatops for payment solutions/providers/oracles is just
automation. 'Ok Google, please pay HN 1 Gbyte for the inspiration.'

See for a good example how Byteball is doing this in their Android client,
encrypted chat inside their wallet, chat with bots and oracles and chat with
other people to send 'MBytes' to their wallet or using e-mail with a 'claim'
link. I paid my lunch that way to colleagues (who are now stuck with MBytes to
play with).

To get around the Apple walled garden you could even make gateway
GBYTE/NEO/XBT bots for Discord, Matrix/Riot or IRC.

[https://medium.com/byteball/sending-cryptocurrency-to-
email-...](https://medium.com/byteball/sending-cryptocurrency-to-
email-5c9bce22b8a9)

------
ikeboy
I fail to see why this is valuable in any way. Why would this raise even a
million, let alone half a billion?

~~~
akerro
Blockchain, VR, Bitcoin, AI are the buzzwords that bring you $$$. Businesses
will throw money at you just for using AI/ML, blockchain, even if these use
cases can be solved with a few if/else or fuzzy logic or distributed NoSQL
database.

~~~
mstade
No kidding, this also works in large organizations when teams/departments want
to increase their budget. Create a project using some buzzword tech, or say
you will integrate it in an existing project, and the people with their
fingers on the money trigger are much easier to convince. Even if it makes no
sense or adds no real value, it can gain you significant budget room to make
other changes you want or need to do, and the higher ups get to brag about how
they are implementing blockchains everywhere..

------
meri_dian
The ability of a cryptocurrency to overcome attack is based on the amount of
computational power expended on hashing.

As more and more standalone cryptocurrencies are launched, the total amount of
computational power expended on each will decrease and therefore make each
more vulnerable to a 51% attack.

This problem is especially pertinent to niche currencies like Telegram's which
are tied to a specific company service rather than those trying to act as a
general unit of storage or exchange like Bitcoin or even an industry or
economy wide tool like Ripple's XRP which. The more specific a currency's use
case, the less processing power that will be dedicated to processing that
currency's blockchain. And the more vulnerable it will be.

This seems like a real problem for the ecosystem as a whole.

~~~
oh_sigh
That only holds true for PoW systems

~~~
meri_dian
How is PoS safe from this?

~~~
googlryas
With PoW, assuming you can use the same hardware to mine different coins, then
you just point your BTC mining rig onto MinorCoin, you get 51% of the hashing
power and then you can double spend and let's say crash the value of the coin.

Once that is done, you can move your mining rigs onto the next MinorCoin, or
you can put them back to mining BTC without you having lost any value except
for the opportunity cost when you weren't mining BTC.

With PoS, you need to buy up 51% of the coins in order to make the attack. As
you buy more and more coins, the price will rise, so you will spend more money
than you expect to get to 51%. Then, once you're there, you do some double
spend attacks and destroy the value of the network. Now, all that money you
pumped into it is gone. That is the key difference between PoS and PoW in this
scenario.

~~~
0wing
BTC PoW hashing power is supplied by ASICs so it's impossible for BTC miners
to do anything with their hardware other than mine BTC/BCash.

PoS mining is just rewarding the rich simply for being rich. What could be
wrong with that?

~~~
googlryas
BTC ASICs could be re-purposed for any coin that uses the same hashing
algorithm of BTC.

PoS doesn't reward the rich for being rich any more than a savings account
rewards the rich for being rich by letting them make more money off of a given
interest rate.

~~~
0wing
The algorithm BTC uses has been depreciated in favor of ASIC resistant mining
protocols which prevent what we see with Bitmain and allow normal users to
access mining rewards.

BTC ASICs are a case of failure to prevent centralization. Nearly every
successor to Bitcoin has developed ASIC resistant algorithms to allow normal
users to contribute to securing the network activity and be rewarded with
newly minted supply for doing so.

Block rewards are nothing like savings interest because it works like an all
or nothing lottery.

If the developer or an exchange controls 40% or even 10% of the supply, they
have a significantly higher likelihood of taking newly minted coins which
compounds further increases to their probability of increasing their control
of the supply. All the while those who have less of the supply or are too poor
to qualify for staking will not be exponentially increasing their wealth.

------
Maro
What if everybody starts making their coins, Amazon, Facebook, Chinese
companies, etc. Suddenly it sounds like I'll end up paying tx fees to convert
coins. Doesn't sound very good... And what currency should I get my salary in?

~~~
luxpir
This is one quite likely outcome for our future. There is never a clean
solution and everyone wants 'power'. I just dread what will happen when some
crypto-rich colonialist leaves the planet to create 'Slave World'. Sigh...
humans.

------
snissn
Kik has their own crypto called Kin

A lot lot lot of crypto projects use Telegram for their official chat lines.

------
yalogin
What is preventing every app/service to launch their own crypto currency? It
looks like in these times it is in their own interest to launch their own
crypto currency than adopting an existing one as they stand to make billions.
In that scenario do we say bitcoin and their ilk is failing or succeeding?

~~~
kayfox
Nothing is preventing them. So expect everyone to do it.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Nothing is preventing them.

Fear of the SEC is likely preventing plenty of them.

------
criddell
Is this solving a real problem? Video game consoles have had online stores
with their own virtual currency for a long time now. Why not just go that
route? Other than marketing reasons, why bother with a full on cryptocurrency
for Telegram? Are the benefits worth the environmental costs of mining
(assuming a similar to Bitcoin technology)?

------
sAbakumoff
I heard of an interesting conspiracy theory that Telegram & Mr. Durov are the
grandiose project of the Russian secret service. Mr. Durov's company VKontakte
that is the clone of Facebook in Russia is now fully controlled by structures
affiliated to Kremlin after Mr. Durov was allowed to sell the company and
leave Russia. The theory says that he was allowed to do so in exchange of
building fully controlled global IM which is secure on paper but transparent
to certain observers. BS? Probably! But if telegram is successful in creating
global in-app purchase system that is centralized(the article mentions that)
and controlled by Kremlin, that would be an awesome undercover operation, the
one of a bigger caliber than Trump's election.

~~~
pwaai
Well if you think about it it's actually quite genius ...

How do you subvert an increasingly connected population where information
travels and spreads like wildfire that can force you out of power?

You bring those people on a platform where they are told they are safe because
of _technical jargon here_.

It's in their best interest to not reveal these relationships or make it
obvious that the people on such platform are being monitored. Nor are they
trying to catch people who are smart enough to not use the platform. _ex.
"terrorists"_

What's important is that they've essentially captured a large bracket of the
population using such privacy tools thinking they are free from surveillance
when in fact it's the complete opposite. Now you have full ability to disrupt
and destroy any type of anti-government organization.

------
OJFord
Its founder:

> Messaging apps shouldn't make money

[http://www.wired.co.uk/article/messaging-
apps](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/messaging-apps)

An interview which of course does not bind him nor the company to that
philosophy, but it is slightly encouraging.

------
pjc50
"Instant Hypercube Routing"

This all sounds a bit .. timecube?

~~~
goda90
I enjoyed learning about Hypercube routing in my parallel processing class. A
hypercube is just a 2^n cube. A square = 2^2, a cube 2^3, a 4 dimensional
hybercube = 2^4, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube_internetwork_topolog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube_internetwork_topology)

------
cantrip
This is a disaster, as it will likely succeed and in doing so make the entire
world less secure.

Telegram is not a secure messaging platform, despite marketing themselves as
such.

Signal has built a simple, seamless, and beautiful messaging platform whose
security is based on solid cryptography, not marketing, bug contests, or
chasing the latest tech fad.

~~~
jherdman
> Telegram is not a secure messaging platform, despite marketing themselves as
> such.

Supporting sources?

~~~
Vinnl
There's this, by a respected cryptographer who, however, also is the author of
Signal: [https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-
challenge/](https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/)

~~~
miaklesp
Any less biased source?

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
Moxie might have his own horse in the race, but his analysis of cryptosystems
should not be questioned. His philosophy is around humans being able to access
strong encryption. I believe he ultimately doesn't care what you use, as long
as your communications are secure.

~~~
Vinnl
And to illustrate that, he worked with Facebook to add Signal's encryption to
WhatsApp (and Google to Allo).

------
jnsaff2
So ICO is the new Kickstarter?

------
mtgx
I suggested about six months ago that Signal should have its own
ICO/cryptocurrency. Good way to get an open source project funded. Look at
Brave, IPFS, and others.

~~~
sah2ed
MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike [0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935583)

[1] [https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-
en.pdf](https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-en.pdf)

------
AznHisoka
Does WeChat have its own cryptocurrency or do its users just transfer fiat (ie
yuan) into it?

~~~
vazamb
As far as I understand Wechat pay is more or less PayPal. So no crypto
anything.

------
erikb
Already excited about the upcoming lawsuit, US government vs Telegram.

------
KasianFranks
I'm all for it.

------
mrsea
Theres plenty of good cryptocurrencies now, it doesn't seem like theirs is
going to be that useful. Tons of them have thousands of people looking to
spend it on too.

