Telegram cryptocurrency is for sale at three times their ICO price

South Korea’ Gram Asia is selling its rights to Gram holdings beginning July 10 at $4 per token, up three times from its original price, according to Bloomberg.

During Gram’s second initial offering (ICO) last March 2018, the price per coin was only $1.33. Notably, the current price is also nearly 1000% higher than the $0.38 reached on the company’s first ICO.

Gram is the yet-to-be-released native coin for the Telegram Open Network (TON), which is a decentralized network project built by encrypted messenger app Telegram. The unreleased coin can be used in different TON services, including payments for blockchain services, bypassing censorship, and hiding identity and IP addresses.

As per the report, the token sale is currently being conducted exclusively via the Japanese crypto exchange Liquid. A discount of $0.50 per Gram will reportedly be given to buyers who will pay using Liquid’s cryptocurrency QASH. Other currencies accepted are USDC and USD.

The delivery of the Gram tokens will start after the launch of TON in four equal-sized tranches in over an 18-month period. However, the pre-ordered Grams, which will eventually be made available outside of TON, will appear in the buyer’s Liquid wallet.

“All buyer funds from the sale will be converted to USDC and kept in a segregated wallet under escrow until the Gram tokens are delivered,” as stated on Liquid’s website.

The service, which has 260 million active users, is expecting to release its Gram token by the third quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, although the Gram Token Sale will be available globally, customers from restricted countries including Japan, Korea, and the U.S. are ineligible to join.

That said, a source close to Telegram had previously told Cointelegraph that there was no relationship between Liquid and Telegram and that the announced token sale is not related to the messaging giant. A Telegram investor had also stated that no one has the rights to sell the tokens before the official launch. The token purchase contract prohibits the buyer to

“Enter into any swap or other agreement that transfers, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of the investment contract represented by this purchase agreement or any tokens.”

Speaking to the media outlet, Mike Kayamori, co-founder and CEO of Liquid, clarified that it entered into a deal with Gram Asia, not Telegram. He also said that Gram Asia was involved in the TON project as an incubator.

After working over the past year, Telegram released the testnet for TON last May, which it describes as “a fast, secure and scalable blockchain and network platform offering smart contracts, upgradeable formal blockchain specifications, support for micropayment channels and off-chain payment networks.”

As stated in its white paper, TON can handle “millions of transactions per second if necessary, and both user-friendly and service provider-friendly.”