Toncoin has been on an unstoppable run so far this year, with Telegram now on the brink of attracting one billion monthly active users. But will it last?
The rankings of the world’s biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap don’t change all that often. Bitcoin has cemented its position at number one, with Ether (ETH) a solid second and Tether (USDT) immovable in third.
But there’s one digital asset that’s seen its status surge in recent months — and that’s Toncoin. Billed as “the future of currency,” it has close ties to the immensely popular Telegram messaging app and has had a pretty box office year so far.
On January 1, Toncoin was the 15th-largest coin with a price of $2.33 and an overall valuation of $8 billion. Fast forward to now and it’s now ninth — leapfrogging the likes of Cardano and Avalanche after its market cap doubled to $17 billion in just seven months.
TON is now tantalizingly close to overtaking memecoin stalwart Dogecoin in eighth place, which would be another milestone in its seemingly unstoppable rise. But what’s been behind this coin’s huge success, and is it primed to continue?
The TON story so far
Telegram had made a huge splash when it began work to establish its own Layer 1 chain back in 2017 — and ended up selling what were then known as “Gram tokens” to fund development. But this subsequently led to a run in with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The threat of legal action ultimately prompted Telegram to abandon the project in the middle of 2020, with a decentralized team of developers vowing to pick up where the social network left off. Since then, it’s fair to say The Open Network has gone from strength to strength.
In a significant development, TON’s self-custodial wallet was directly integrated into this hugely popular app last September — allowing crypto payments to be made directly to businesses that offer their services through this platform.
All of this has coincided with Telegram launching Mini Apps — and according to the tech giant, this allows entrepreneurs to effortlessly replace their website. From fast food to hotel bookings, transactions can take place in a frictionless way.
This has started to make Telegram look like a Western answer to China’s WeChat, which has diversified beyond messaging to become a “super app” that increasingly offers everything users need in one place.
Insatiable demand… and hamsters
Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov says that the app now has 950 million monthly active users, an increase of 50 million compared with a quarter ago. His company now has its sights set on hitting a cool billion, amid rumors that it may consider an initial public offering. Reflecting on the progress that’s been made, he wrote on his official channel:
2024 will go down in history as the year when hundreds of millions of people became familiar with blockchain. We’re proud that Telegram is at the epicenter of this societal transformation. To keep the fire going, this month, we will introduce a mini app store and an in-app browser with support for Web3 pages.
This is a bullish development — especially when you consider Telegram’s huge user base. Put another way, this is the only app that has the potential to expose vast numbers of Web2 users to cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and the Web3 ecosystem as a whole. Elon Musk’s enthusiasm for X to fill this void appears to be waning.
What’s quite exciting is how apps can suddenly go mega viral on Telegram, with a classic example being the clicker game Hamster Kombat. Durov says it’s now attracted more than 250 million sign-ups — and is fully embracing crypto.
Soon, Hamster’s team will mint its token on TON, introducing the benefits of blockchain to hundreds of millions of people. A new era is coming, and we are witnessing its arrival in real time.
Pavel Durov
Throw in some high-profile integrations with major crypto businesses — USDT payments can now be made on Telegram, with OKX launching a game where players can guess Bitcoin’s price movements — and this is an app that really seems unstoppable.
There’s just one fly in the ointment: concerns are growing that Telegram is becoming the new “dark web,” with everything from guns to cocaine brazenly sold in channels subscribed to by tens of thousands of people.
This, when coupled with widespread support for crypto payments, could end up triggering a huge global regulatory crackdown.