Recently TechCrunch the beginning of sales of "grams" on July 10 on the Japanese stock exchange Liquid. Surprisingly, the world believed in a completely fictional story about the Telegram financial instrument.
Epigraph
Major publications often publish rumors (information from trusted sources), but you will not find such a multi-part story as with TON, built exclusively on leaks without any official information.
Yes, the news about the Apple car could have flashed. But no one wrote that the company will present it in the spring, a nameplate for the steering wheel has already been developed, the release is being postponed to autumn, German and French automakers have secretly invested in a new type of engine, pre-orders will begin at an exhibition in Japan and so on.
This story is not to protect everyone from scammers. I'm an optimist, but not that much. Therefore, this story is about post-truth and journalism, about marketing and manipulation, about RBC, Kommersant, Vedomosti, The Bell, TechCrunch and all the rest.
Chronology
I return to the Telegram cryptocurrency. Personally, I reacted to the leaks of information about TON with great distrust. But in order to explain to you for the title, I will try to restore the entire chronology of events.
December 21, 2017 (on the date Pavel Winter Solstice) TON was first mentioned on the network - YouTube channel ZΞFIR a video with the alleged announcement of the Telegram blockchain system. In the evening of the same day about the appearance of the video former VKontakte employee Anton Rosenberg. Let's dwell on this moment in more detail.
- The Russian-language YouTube channel ZΞFIR was created on May 11, 2015. He published three videos: two about TON and one about hacking an ATM. From spring 2018 , и "Zephyra" abandoned. The creator of "Zephyr" could not be found.
- The description of the video about TON does not indicate by whom and for what purposes it was created. It says that he was "leaked" by Anton Rosenberg from somewhere. For details, a link is provided to the remote past ZΞFIR site ().
- Anton Rozenberg, who leaked the video, became quite famous among the Russian-speaking audience of Telegram after with the Durov brothers and the company OOO "", which resulted in the conclusion .
- October 9, 2018 for a video about the TON project their rights Russian film studio "". The affiliation of the video to this studio is very similar to the truth, since (Vice President of Telegram, which will be discussed later) since 2010 (or earlier) with the general director of the film company "Livandiya Entertainment" - .
- Ilya Perekopsky is a co-founder of an aggregator of non-banking credit institutions which in 2017 и at the film studio "Livandiya Entertainment". By the way, Blackmoon and TON videos are similar in style, only TON has a voice like Steve Taylor from the educational videos of the YouTube channel .
- With all this, it is very strange that a video from the non-public TON project, and then its white paper, fell into the hands of Rosenberg. Many began to think that this is such a marketing ploy from Telegram.
The first media that started blowing the wind was the Cointelegraph website. The day after the publication of the video about TON, this information from unknown source:
- the cryptocurrency will be called Gram;
- it will be integrated into popular messengers;
- the TON platform will have light wallets.
All this gave rise to a wave of fraudulent collections of money. Already on December 23, Pavel Durov published a tweet in which he warned that Telegram publishes its official announcements only on telegram.org, that everything else is most likely a scam.
Attention: Telegram publishes its official announcements only at . Everything else is most likely a scam.
- Pavel Durov (@durov)
We detected several scam websites like – please stay alert.
- Pavel Durov (@durov)
In just one day, several scammers hastily put together websites for the fake sale of Gram tokens. There is a suspicion that some of them were already ready for this and knew about the details of the project.
At the end of December 2018, many large Runet crypto channels spread rumors about TON. They were joined by popular publications such as , , , who are "" and many others - with clickbait headlines and insiders from "numerous sources".
A year ago, I didn't name any names or even leave a link. But since nothing has changed, I want to show you from Vedomosti.
Post-truth or "fake news" in interstate information wars seems to be commonplace. But it scares when these two words become the style of the oldest domestic media brand. Especially considering that this brand stands for genuine journalism and proudly associates itself with it.
“Telegram ICO collected applications for $3,8 billion” - for me alone this headline is a frank clickbait, given the lack of official information to date on this matter? Do you think you can retort with the fact that this news has reliable sources? But why neither Bloomberg, nor TechCrunch, nor others, covering this topic and referring to some Russian investors, do not write in such an affirmative “Past Perfect” form?
The title is not the most important thing. Yesterday, Durov wrote on his Twitter: “If you see or receive offers to “buy Grams”, let us know at @notoscam (Antiscam)”. But what happens next?
Our media in its article cuts out everything that has the same root as “scam” from the quote. It turns out that Mr. Durov simply asks everyone to report on the offer to purchase Grams. Somersault. Journalists conclude that a market for the resale of tokens may emerge.
I didn’t mention statements like this yet: “Telegram’s audience is now 150 million people, and by January 2022 it should reach 1 billion.” Well, these are not Cosmopolitan test scores or goal setting in Youth Business!
Where , and where is the authoritative business newspaper in Russia with its contacts around the world, you ask? But I'm not asking you to believe me. This is just #thinkingout loud and I'll be happy to be wrong. Although the bluff of the petition on Change.org regarding the blocking of Telegram from the same publication was exposed by me last year. In general, I would like to wish everyone more skepticism and doubt. The personal filter of common sense in the era of post-truth and "fake news" is more important than ever.
In conclusion, I will quote a recent statement by Vladimir Sungorkin, general director of the Komsomolskaya Pravda publishing house: “There is no popular publication or popular media in the Russian Federation that does not publish paid articles. Does not exist."
A number of Russian-language media unconfirmed information about investments in TON by large Russian businessmen, and if you search by their names on the network, none of the investors, except for David Yakobashvili, confirmed their involvement in TON.
David Yakobashvili for RBC, February 16, 2018
Yes, I invested $10 million of my personal funds in Telegram in January. Perhaps I will participate in the Telegram ICO, which will be held in March, I have not decided yet
Almost every day, an article about the Telegram cryptocurrency was published by reputable publications, but it is important to mention that none of them got into , which is approved by the Telegram team.
In early January 2018, “leaked” TON “white papers” began to appear, among which there were several obvious fakes. , created on December 21, 2017, and , created on December 3, 2017 - the media took it for authentic documents.
In particular simply takes and quotes opinions about the authenticity of TON from Fedor Skuratov from Combot, Anatoly Kaplan from Forklog and other people who have nothing to do with the Telegram team, leaving no doubt about the falsification of this story for the reader.
However, the document, which is allegedly from Nikolai Durov, looks very strange and in fact is an abstract description of all existing blockchain technologies, where there is no specifics on their implementation in Telegram.
Updated formal specifications, transfers between different cryptocurrencies, support for micropayment channels and off-chain transfers, a self-healing vertical blockchain mechanism, instant hypercube routing, many other super-duper nanotechnologies and, again, no connection with Telegram.
Note that this documentation is very far from the one . But I must admit that I am not an expert in the blockchain and therefore I want to bring from The Verge by Matthew Green, cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University about TON:
The White Paper reads as if someone has collected the most ambitious ideas from a dozen projects on the Internet and said: “Let's do all this, but better!”. It seems out of reach, at least on the scale they're aiming for.
I have another very good argument for doubting the appropriateness of the TON White Paper. This time. I suggest that you compare the plans of the authors of the document with today's reality.
In February 2018, Vedomosti broke the news that Pavel Durov had reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about raising $850 million in an ICO from 81 investors. Information is multiplying, everyone is referring to a certain document on the SEC website. And no one writes that the presence of this document in EDGAR does not in any way indicate involvement in this SEC. No way!
Let me explain: EDGAR is an Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system - roughly, a public register of applications to the commission, each of which can be sent by everyone. Therefore, it is very unprofessional to draw specific conclusions from this now. And about EDGAR, I specifically specified on Reddit in и .
When all this happened, I wanted to conduct an experiment. I wrote to TechCrunch, they say, insider, that's it. Jon Russell contacted me. He asked if I was an investor and a few hours later published . TechCrunch was the first overseas media to report on the application to EDGAR.
How Ilya Pestov at the moment turned out to be a potential investor in Telegram.
В апреле 2018 года announced that the former deputy CEO of VKontakte and co-founder of Blackmoon Financial Group Ilya Perekopsky became the vice president for business development of Telegram.
In May 2018, when the activity of leaks about TON decreased, the Telegram channel "Buffett's 10 Dollars" on Twitter to the declared vice president of Telegram, Ilya Perekopsky, and received feedback from him:
Unfortunately, @10dollarov's account is blocked, I can't give a link to that dialogue
At the same time, the Buffetts were collecting investments in a private channel for Project T - from their posts it was obvious that Telegram was meant. Ilya confirmed the fact that the Buffetts were raising money on TON with his comment. To make sure of this for sure, the author of the Telegram channel "Zoloto Borodach" wrote to Ilya and participation of the Buffetts in the closed sale of TON.
Also, the author of the channel "Zoloto Borodach" concluded that Mr. Perekopsky is indeed the vice president of Telegram. I am quoting a fragment :
Firstly, back in 2003, Durov registered the Telegram domain to Perekopsky's mailbox. Secondly, Ilya sent me an email from his work mail on the telegram.org domain. I don’t think that he would have such mail if he didn’t work for Telegram. And I don’t think that the press would not have been corrected after the announcement of Ilya as vice president if he had not been one. Which proves the title of Ilya in Telegram.
However, the existence of mail on the domain since it is not clear what times and publications in the media do not confirm anything. We also don't know if that email is active - maybe it was spoofing. I also want to remind you that in 2014 Pavel Durov accused Perekopsky of trying to Telegram. But most importantly, neither Durov nor Telegram made any press releases about Perekopsky's appointment.
On the Ilya Perekopsky indicated "". But if you go to this page, you will see that it does not have a verification icon, unlike all official Telegram representations on Twitter. And in general, she looks very strange. In addition to links to Telegram announcements that come out very late, there are irrelevant videos with all sorts of nonsense:
Still not enough reason to doubt the position of Mr. Perekopsky? One of the Groks subscribers shared with me a story about how he reported "$10 Buffett" and at antiscam. Both channels got banned is only from the authors of one of them.
It turns out that Telegram banned the channel of TON investors, with whom the Vice President of Telegram communicates? Am I the only one who finds this strange?
With a decrease in interest in cryptocurrencies in general, there was no big news about TON for a long time. The topic was fueled by attention from the blockchain community, but the mainstream media did not write much about it.
Although there are exceptions in the face of The Bell - for example, their “How much does Gram cost: Durov’s future cryptocurrency was estimated at almost $30 billion.”
And in April 2019, the information field shuddered again: Pavel Durov agreed on a partnership with the German financial giant Wirecard.
Surprisingly, even such pillars of the domestic media sphere as Kommersant and RBC did not bother to carefully study wirecard. After all, there is not a word about Mr. Durov, it is only about TON Labs. - this is not clear what was created by a certain Alexander Filatov. It is also known that the aforementioned Fedor Skuratov, the founder of Combot, is associated with the project.
On May 24, 2019, a link appeared on one of the channels about TON where are located:
- — light client sources for the TON test network;
- — configuration file for connecting to the test network;
- - information about the assembly and launch of the client;
- — step-by-step instructions on how to create a smart contract using the client;
- — updated document (dated March 2, 2019) with a technical overview of the TON network;
- — technical description of TVM (TON Virtual Machine, TON virtual machine);
- — technical description of the TON blockchain;
- — a description of the new Fift language, designed to create smart contracts in TON.
Two days later, The Bell publishes in its channel with the title "Durov told investors about the success of testing the Telegram blockchain platform" with the following annotation: "The first official information about testing the Telegram cryptocurrency platform." Next appears "Durov's Blockchain Platform: Device, Money and Opportunities".
However, there are also serious research works. For example, from Nikita Kolmogorov, the author of the above channel . He studied all the documents and, in a manner characteristic of a hardened geek, made a detailed review of the TON test blockchain. Briefly, this is “just a wrapper around the node thrown on the knee in a quick way.”
I also wanted to at least glance at the instructions, but I stopped on the sixth page when I saw the word "oftenly". Even with my poor knowledge of English, I understand that this is the same as seeing the word “theirs” or “hers” in a document. This observation, of course, does not draw on a stylistic analysis of the text, but the assumption of such an error from the Telegram team is very doubtful.
However, many are still convinced that on May 24 there was another leak of information, that behind all this is either a skillful intriguer, or dupe Durov, whose team has already leaked everything that was possible.
Apotheosis
- There is no official confirmation of TON's involvement in the Telegram team.
- There is a murky story with the self-proclaimed vice president of Telegram, Ilya Perekopsky.
- There are a number of Russian-language media and TechCrunch that go to any newsbreak about TON for the sake of exclusiveness, completely forgetting about factology.
- There is people into the fact that silence is a sign of consent. Like, if Pavel Durov does not deny the news about TON, then TON exists.
- Few people think that Mr. Durov may deliberately not stop the rumors about TON, which brought him hundreds of mentions of Telegram in many media around the world.
There will be no conclusions. I'm pretending to be a journalist here, and real journalism is an impartial statement of facts. The original judgments and conclusions based on them should remain in the minds of readers.
John Evans, TechCrunch columnist
The real problem is not the fake news, but the fact that people have stopped looking for the truth.
A great thought from an equally great article that TechCrunch for some reason deleted. Funny coincidence. Good, in Telegram and remember everything.
Many thanks to the Telegram user with the nickname . He did , which formed the basis of the current article. Thank you for attention.
Source: habr.com