The entire TON system fell more than 16% in value, losing billions of dollars in capitalization after the news of the arrest of the founder and CEO of Telegram in France.
The Guardian, citing information from the French channel TF1, said that Pavel Durov, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport outside Paris on the evening of August 24. After the event, the communication tool still operated normally. However, cryptocurrency projects in the Telegram ecosystem were strongly affected, with prices falling in the morning of the same day.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, Toncoin (TON) fell more than 16%, to about $5.5/coin just 2 hours after the news of Pavel Durov’s arrest was revealed. At one point, the total capitalization of the project reached less than $13 billion.
In addition to Toncoin, other projects built on this ecosystem also lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB did not fluctuate much during the same period.
Cryptocurrencies belonging to the Telegram system fell sharply on the morning of August 25. Photo: CoinMarketCap.
GameFi Tap-to-Earn Notcoin (NOT) running on TON decreased by about 17% during the same period, with its capitalization falling below 1 billion USD. Memecoin built on Povel Durev (DUREV) decreased by up to 20%.
Overall, the market capitalization of the TON Ecosystem decreased by more than 15% while the transaction volume increased by more than 300% after the bad news appeared. Assets belonging to the GameFi group, Memecoin reacted more strongly and fluctuated greatly when there was an incident.
TON (The Open Network, formerly Telegram Open Network) is a cryptocurrency project built by attaching to a messaging application. Launched in 2018, raising more than 1.7 billion USD in capital, but it did not make much of an impression on the market. By 2020, the project was banned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for violating the country’s service regulations.
Later, Pavel Durov announced that Telegram would withdraw from TON. But in fact, this project still serves and depends on the messaging application. Blockchain is integrated to NFT usernames and auctions, integrating digital wallets into the app to support TON’s sticker packages or GameFi.
The TON system is of interest to many Vietnamese investors, because the above messaging app is commonly used in this group. Previously, the community was excited about the news of Dogs, a memecoin of the TON system, rewarding users with activities on the messaging app. Many people have bought a large number of accounts to exchange for tokens, hoping that being listed on the Binance exchange will help it increase in price.
However, the news of Telegram CEO’s arrest right before Dogs’s listing will affect the sale, similar to the price decline of TON cryptocurrency.
