Telegram TON: has bid goodbye to one of its biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain project TON.

The announcement was made by CEO Pavel Durov, the Russian ex-pat today on his messaging app, Telegram.

“The technology we created allowed for an open, free, decentralized exchange of value and ideas. TON had the potential to revolutionize how people store and transfer funds and information,”

he wrote on his channel.

“Unfortunately, a U.S. court stopped TON from happening.”

New York’s Southern District court declared that GRAM couldn’t be distributed in the United States.

The judge ruled that U.S. citizens might find some way of accessing the TON platform after it launched, so the platform couldn’t be allowed either. Keeping the project alive would be difficult now because it meant a legal liability for Durov to ensure no Americans would ever be involved in transactions on the platform.

Yesterday, May 12 was marked as the last day any employee of Telegram would have an association with TON.

No present or past member of Telegram is involved with TON projects. Durov also clearly stated in his channels that any networks that may pop up with reference to TON would not be associated with Telegram.

In deep remorse of the shutting down of the project,

he added, “If the U.S. suddenly decided to ban coffee and demanded coffee shops in Italy be closed because some American might come there – we doubt anyone would agree.”

TON Labs, a startup released its own version of the test network TON, dubbed as “Free TON”. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has always frowned upon cryptocurrencies as they are securities that come with almost minimum investor protection.

Last October, the SEC sought a temporary restraining order against the Telegram blockchain project, stopping them temporarily from the offering, selling, delivering, or distributing its GRAM coin.

The SEC said that it thought Telegram was going to “flood the markets with billions of . . . (coins) through an unregistered offering of securities.”

The SEC said that,

“without a registration statement in place, Telegram’s planned distribution would violate the federal securities laws” and that pretty much put a nail in that blockchain operation’s coffin.

CEO Durov is battling a crisis and says to his followers that this fight is the important battle of our generation and hopes that the present followers succeed where he has failed.