Tone Coin Surges Thanks to Telegram's Expanding Reach in the Virtual Asset Market

Over 40% Increase Since December... Price Recovery Expected by February
Telegram's Commitment to Establish a Decentralized Exchange Acts as a Positive Factor

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] Telegram, known as a highly secure messenger, is expanding its presence in the virtual asset market. Along with this movement, the price of Ton Coin, a virtual asset circulated within Telegram's blockchain ecosystem, has surged significantly since the beginning of this month.

According to the global virtual asset market tracking site CoinMarketCap, as of 3 PM on the 22nd, the price of Ton Coin was recorded at $2.50 (approximately 3,189 KRW), up 4.03% from the previous day. Ton Coin's price has shown a sharp upward trend since the start of this month. Compared to February 1st, it has surged over 40%, recovering to the price level before the Luna incident and the global virtual asset exchange FTX bankruptcy earlier this year.

The reason Ton Coin's price has surged this month is that Telegram is accelerating its entry into the virtual asset market. Due to growing distrust in centralized exchanges (CEX) following the FTX incident, Telegram has expressed its intention to establish a decentralized exchange (DEX) where coins can be traded without intermediaries or administrators.

Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, stated on Twitter on the 1st of this month, "The blockchain industry was built promising decentralization but eventually concentrated power in the hands of a few who began to abuse it," adding, "Telegram's next step is to build a set of decentralized tools, including a decentralized exchange, so that millions of people can safely trade and store virtual assets." Previously, in October, Telegram created a decentralized auction platform called Fragment, which reportedly facilitated transactions worth $50 million (approximately 63.8 billion KRW) within a month.

Ton Coin refers to the virtual asset circulated within Telegram's blockchain project, The Open Network (TON). The TON blockchain adopts a Proof of Stake (PoS) method, where users stake cryptocurrency to participate in block validation and creation, receiving coins as rewards. Additionally, it is known to feature sharding functionality, which divides data into small segments for distributed storage. This data partitioning allows for faster verification speeds and helps keep transaction costs low.

Based on the TON blockchain, Telegram conducted two coin issuances (ICOs) in 2018, raising $1.7 billion (approximately 2.17 trillion KRW). Although the ICO was limited to select investors and institutions, it attracted over 2 trillion KRW in funding. However, TON faced a downturn due to sanctions from U.S. regulatory authorities. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit, deeming the ICO illegal for failing to provide information on financial status and risks. Ultimately, with the SEC winning the case, Telegram halted the blockchain project, and the sale and distribution of the virtual asset Gram, which was circulating at the time, were completely banned.

Despite this crisis, Telegram's blockchain began to revive from June last year. A new development team took over and advanced the blockchain project, and the virtual asset that started circulating afterward is Ton Coin. However, there are suspicions that a significant amount of Ton Coin is held in a small number of wallet addresses.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.