Gram Asia, a private holder of a large amount of Telegram GRAM tokens, has reached an agreement with the Japan-based Liquid exchange platform to resell an unspecified number of the tokens to the public, according to a report in Yahoo Finance. It is the first public sale of GRAM tokens, although they will not be tradeable until October.
Telegram the company are building a blockchain layer atop their widely used private messaging application of the same name, the Telegram Open Network (TON), which is set to go online in Q3 this year.
Although Telegram had originally planned to hold a 50/50 public-private sale of GRAM tokens for the TON platform, they scrapped these plans earlier this year citing regulatory concerns; and due to the fact that had already successfully raised $1.7 billion from private investors.
Today we have something special to share. Liquid will host the $Gram Token Sale. For most traders, this will be the first chance to buy the long-awaited Gram token. Plus, our $QASH holders will benefit from exclusive rebates on their purchases. Get ready.https://t.co/Rpe0KZMM1J
— Mike Kayamori (@MikeKayamori) June 11, 2019
Liquid, a Japan-based cryptoasset exchange that’s not to be confused with Blockstream’s Liquid Bitcoin sidechain, will begin selling the tokens next month. But critically, users will not be able to withdraw or trade these tokens until the platform goes live – with the release slated for October 2019. In fact, the release of purchased GRAM tokens will not occur at once, but rather in four releases over the course of 18 months.
(source: Liquid.com)
Another notable caveat is that customers from the U.S., Canada, Japan, and a number of other countries will not be eligible to buy GRAM tokens on Liquid. Holders of Liquid’s proprietary exchange token QASH will also apparently reap discounts if they use it to buy GRAMs.
Good for Liquid
Liquid is a highly regulated exchange with hundreds of employees spread out across Asia, and valued at a billion dollars after securing additional investment a couple of months ago. At time of writing, the exchange only processed a modest daily trading volume of $144 million, according to CoinMarketCap.com – about 1/10th of Binance’s trading volume.
(source: CryptoCompare)
The QASH token has seen a modest bump in price since the announcement, climbing about 20% in price between the news and time of writing.
