This is anyhow going to happen with every ICO now. These ICOs have stopped making any sense these days. Accountability is damn too low. They just their whole business idea by merely one medium post and say that what they thought in whitepaper has changed. This is merely misusing the p2p trust network.
That's a big loss for Telegram but I think they can still maintain it very well. because now people use telegram a lot and maybe in the future people will come to Telegram to discuss all issues. In Messenger, IG and many other social networking sites, there is no privacy, our personal information is always stolen. That's why Telegram has a problem but I still believe it will thrive in the future.
How do telegram generate its revenue?
Accroding to freedough.com:
Telegram is a free app and runs on donations. According to a blog on the telegram: We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free. Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being.Oct 23, 2018
I guess that the Telegram owners and devs relied on the ICO to fund the company and build a business model around accepting "Gram" payments for future "premium" services that will be offered by Telegram.
Now the funds will have to get refunded to the investors and I don't know how Telegram will survive in the long term.
Maybe they will start an Ad platform and sells targeted Advertising,just like Facebook or Instagram.This will ruin their current Business model(which is focused on privacy)for sure.Another option is to sell some premium stuff,just like Discord is selling nitro.
Interesting, you mean they would be paying up this whole penalty merely with help of donations and nothing else? I believe they kight be getting heavy donations then from underworld or something.
$1.2 Billion is nothing when trying to imagine how much Russia spent blocking (unsuccessfully) Telegram on Russian Federation territory during
two years and later
lifts its ban on June 19.
According to news, during that "ban" period telegram doubled its users database. Imagine how much income it brought or how much increased companies value. For them, this penalty is nothing, and I'm sure Durov could find way to solve issue with investors.
Yeah when they don't even have a working financial model in place what good is doubling the users. Moreover i think ads more or less would be very difficult to sustain on Telegram. These chat messaging apps become nuisance after ads. This is the reason whatsapp never opted for ads. Best way I think for telegram to create a business model is by making business accounts chargeable or something like that. I would never want to open my telegram and see a tons of ads popping up.