The9 Ltd, a Shanghai company, was the first to invest in the Telegram blockchain project in the course of the closed offer of coins (ICO) held in 2018. This is stated in the statements of the company posted on the website of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The materials indicate that The9 Ltd acquired 5,297,257 tokens of Telegram Inc. for $ 2 million, which are expected to be released in 2019. Thus, the price of a single coin during the ICO was about $ 0.38.

The9 Ltd was founded in 1999. It develops its own online games and distributes games on the territory of the People's Republic of China of other well-known manufacturers. In the 2000s, The9 Ltd was the exclusive distributor in China of the World of Warcraft game published by Blizzard.

Since 2004, The9 Ltd has been trading on NASDAQ. In 2018, the company decided to diversify its business by including blockchain projects in its investment portfolio. In particular, The9 Ltd has entered into agreements with Gingkoo Technology and C & I Singapore Renewable and Innovative on the development of projects based on distributed registry technology, in particular, with renewable energy.

In 2018, Telegram raised $ 1.7 billion from 175 investors in the course of two rounds of a closed tokensale.

Recall that the launch of the Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain platform will take place in the third quarter of 2019. Earlier, developers reported on the successful conduct of a closed testing project.

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