Telegram scraps Gram Tokens

It has been no secret that Telegram (messaging platform) has been in a mammoth battle with various US authorities to offer out Gram tokens to its users. Now Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has confirmed that the dream is over saying:

 
For the last 2,5 years some of our best engineers have been working on a next-generation blockchain platform called TON and a cryptocurrency we were going to name Gram. TON was designed to share the principles of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, but to be vastly superior to them in speed and scalability

Interestingly this decision effectively bans Telegram from making the Gram token anywhere else in the world. This is because they would block the use of the coin in the US where Telegram has many users. In the address he went on to say:

The US can use its control over the dollar and the global financial system to shut down any bank or bank account in the world. It can use its control over Apple and Google to remove apps from the App Store and Google Play. So yes, it is true that other countries do not have full sovereignty over what to allow on their territory.

If the Gram tokens are banned where does that leave Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg with Libra? The concept is very similar but the constructs may not be. Libra is said to be weighted against various assets and pegged to a basket of the worlds most liquid currencies. There will also be ample reserves in assets to back the digital coin in a similar manner to the way gold used to back the American dollar.