GRAM Token Prospects Evaluated by Experts

QIWI experts issued the first analytical report on the GRAM platform. The study was conducted by Hash CIB associated with QIWI Blockchain Technologies. However, the report can hardly be called unbiased: QIWI is the largest investor in Pavel Durov’s ICO, and the report was published by Izvestia newspaper owned by Alisher Usmanov, another major Telegram investor.

During the private ICO Telegram raised $1.7 bn from 175 investors. The ICO has broken all 2018 fundraising records. The proposed issue volume is 5 billion Gram tokens; the investors have already bought 2.89 billion tokens. At the first stage of the token sale, the price was $ 0.38 per token, and at the second one it went up to $ 1.33. Hash CIB is forecasting that the average token price will reach $ 5.9. The platform has components that enjoy high demand, such as the cloud storage, DNS service (the system for receiving domain data), as well as the VPN and anonymizer. According to expert assessments, Telegram has a chance to gain 10% of the market in these areas in 8 years. The company is planning to present its services as early as by 2019. The token’s actual value will depend on whether the developers are able to fully implement all the promises they have made.

According to the authors of the study, in 2026, TON will have a 10% share of the VPN market, and in 2022, a 1% share of the DNS market, and in 4 years, the project will increase its share to 10%. As regards the cloud storage market, experts predict a 10% growth by 2026. However, experts do have certain doubts about VPN, as the company has not yet presented an operational concept for its VPN service.

Surprisingly, it is not other messengers, but blockchain projects that analysts consider to be Telegram’s competitors. They believe the latter have better potential and capabilities to address important blockchain issues — scalability and compatibility. The project’s potential competitors are blockchain giants with capitalization of more than $1 bn.

Anton Rosenberg, formerly head of one of the Telegram’s units, draws attention to the project’s small team of developers and its dependence on data centres located in Europe and the USA. The project’s other problem, in his opinion, is its dependence on the US politics: since the money was raised in US dollars, it can be frozen.

Hitecher’s overview on the prospects of Telegram Open Network and comparison thereof with the Chinese WeChat can be found here.