Produced by Odaily

Translator | Wang Ye

Editor | Lu Xiaoming

Editor | Lu Xiaoming

According to an Aug. 29 report from The New York Times, Telegram plans to launch the “first batch” of its token, GRAM, within the next two months.

In addition, the New York Times pointed out that Telegram must launch cryptocurrencies by October 31, otherwise the $1.7 billion previously raised from investors such as Benchmark and Sequoia Capital will be withdrawn.

In this regard, the New York Times stated that Telegram is working hard to launch a cryptocurrency. The media found that the "deadline" of October 31 was indeed true through a review of legal documents. The SEC report shows that Telegram is also accelerating the ICO process of the cryptocurrency GRAM as much as possible.

But what will GRAM be worth when it finally hits exchanges? People familiar with the matter revealed to Crypto Briefing that it is expected that in October this year, with the launch of Telegram’s main network TON, there will initially be 640 million GRAMs circulating in the market.

Data analytics firm ATON Research published a report on TON earlier this year. In the second round of private funding, one GRAM was worth $1.33, the company said. At this price, GRAM would have a market capitalization of approximately $851 million. That would make it the 16th largest cryptocurrency, $120 million ahead of Dash.

However, anyone who is familiar with the cryptocurrency fundraising process should know that there is still a big difference between the cemetery price of tokens and the private placement price. In early July of this year, the cryptocurrency exchange Liquid, which participated in the private placement of GRAM, sold GRAM to retail investors at a price of $4 each, which was 200% higher than their private placement price.

Crypto Briefing believes that the best indicator of the market value of GRAM may come from its derivatives. According to Crypto Briefing, on March 12 this year, London-based cryptocurrency exchange Xena launched the GRAM perpetual contract product XGRAM, with a leverage of up to 100 times.

Currently XGRAM is changing hands at a price of 2.7 USDT on the Xena exchange. If $2.7 is used as a benchmark, then the expected market cap of GRAM will be around $1.72 billion. Based on this market capitalization, GRAM will become the tenth largest cryptocurrency in the world, surpassing the current market capitalization of Stellar Lumens (XLM) ($1.2 billion).

GRAM is a means of transaction within the TON network. According to the New York Times, it is a fully decentralized network that can bypass government regulation and censorship. Unlike Facebook's Libra, GRAM is not pegged to fiat currency, meaning the value of GRAM will be determined entirely by the free market.

Telegram has promised to issue GRAMs by October 31, or refund investors. According to The Times, the company plans to issue GRAM digital wallets to Telegram’s inherent 300 million users ahead of the token launch.

But because many early investors are limited by the lock-up period, GRAM tokens may not be listed on exchanges immediately. This means that shortly after the release, the price of GRAM will remain stable for a period of time.

Telegram plans to gradually release more tokens into the market over 18 months, bringing the token supply to 3.2 billion.

ATON Research’s report highlights that approximately 700 million GRAMs are used for Telegram team and ecosystem development. If the price remains unchanged after the release of the 700 million tokens, GRAM could have a market cap of close to $10 billion, slightly less than XRP.