Jim Chains

THE TELEGRAM NETWORK STATE? The Telegram TON IPO could be important. Mainly because they get the importance. But first...ok, yes, what got announced it isn’t technically a Telegram offering, nor is TON formally issued by Telegram, nor is it really even an IPO. To be precise, what just launched is a crypto treasury company called VERB that holds $500M+ of TON, which is a coin issued by a foundation that was once formally affiliated with Telegram and then became independent but is now affiliated again. Got all that? But these are really just implementation details. The offering could be important[1] simply because (a) Telegram has a billion users, and (b) TON is now the official coin of those billion users, and (c) Telegram can now officially partner with TON because (d) crypto is now fully legal. So, the potential is clear. Though it was a long and arduous struggle between network and state to get here. Let's review. (1) First, Telegram fought the law and the law…did not win. Briefly, Telegram created TON back in 2018, but an SEC injunction made them turn TON into an independent foundation. However, after the recent democratically-mandated defenestration of Gary Gensler, we saw the regulatory state capitulate and TON reintegrate with Telegram. (2) Next, the French state fought Pavel Durov and that state…did not yet win. Briefly, some French prosecutor came up with a fake case against Durov and grabbed him off a plane. This destroyed @emmanuelmacron’s ambitions to make France “startup friendly”, because investors just avoid France now after Durov's illegitimate prosecution. (3) The UAE has intervened on Durov’s behalf, and he’s now reportedly been let out of house arrest to return to Dubai. If justice still exists, then Durov should beat his case, just as Trump beat his own political prosecutions. In part that's because the case is predicated on the ridiculous idea that Durov is personally responsible for every message sent by the 1B+ users on his platform. That’s like holding Macron personally responsible for every crime committed by 67M Frenchmen. It’s just an unrealistic demand for a zero-crime digital environment, by a French state that can’t itself control crime at all. (4) Anyway, the real reason the French state is going after Durov is the same reason the Blue American state went after Elon and the Chinese state went after Jack Ma. It's because men like Durov are genuine leaders, and their growing strength scares bureaucratic incumbents. Because if there was a technodemocratic[2] plebiscite held, the billion users of Telegram could produce more votes (and hence more democratic legitimacy) for the popular Durov than the 67M French would for the unpopular Macron. The enormous popularity of the heads-of-network means they could become not just more competent but more legitimate than heads-of-state. This is one part of what the bureaucrats (instinctively, inarticulately) fear. (5) The other part is that that a fusion of a messaging app and a cryptocurrency allows something even bigger than a social network to emerge. With communication + AI moderation + crypto transactions, you have something more like a digital economy, one that bureaucrats can't control. Which is the other thing bureaucrats fear. (6) Of course, all that is predicated on actually getting a Telegram coin launched, and making it tradeable, and allowing it to formally integrate with the app. And all that was fought by various states for the better part of a decade, and now all that resistance is finally melting away, seven years after the whole TON thing began. Anyway, so that's why this is interesting to me. Founders like Durov built networks the size of countries, and finally have currencies to match. And as you can see from the video below (from the President of TON Foundation) and the tweet below (from the founder of Telegram), both Telegram and TON are well aware of the potential. They see the beginnings of a cloud country...a network state, if you will. They see the importance.