I have no inside knowledge of a potential stock listing of the popular anti-Whatsapp messaging app, Telegram. But I know this much, judging by most people I talk to, especially crypto investors, if Telegram ever went public, people would gobble it up. I know I would. I’m waiting for it. So is Sergei Sergienko, who claims he owns $800,000 of Telegram’s pre-initial coin offering (ICO) tokens. “If Telegram does a SPAC IPO, there would be demand for this issue. It would probably outstrip the interest we saw during the ICO. Why? Because as of right now Telegram looks like a liberal application that can accept anyone - right after WhatsApp and others have turn on the censorship,” he says.
Telegram is riding high, adding tens of million of users this year. Now the bill is coming due.Telegram is one of the few significant social-media challengers to Facebook Inc., FB -1.90% on a trajectory toward one billion users active each month by the end of 2022, up from roughly 550 million today.
