7th July 2024 > > TON.

tl;dr

TON potentially presents an opportunity like no other.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

I am not the only one who remains relentlessly optimistic about the price of BTC:

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – TON (The Open Network)

Telegram, a Russian social media app that is a favoured choice for the spreading of propaganda, the proliferation of scams, bot-driven SOL meme coin trading, and some very bizarre discussion groups, has its own blockchain and associated crypto, TON.

Initially launched by Telegram, the whole shebang was shut down by the SEC in 2020. However, enthusiasts picked up the source code and relaunched TON. Telegram has since endorsed TON as its official partner for Web3.

What this means is that TON gets exclusive access to Telegram’s user base – over 900 million users. With 2.5mm active users each month currently, TON has a whole lot of space to grow into.

There are plenty of barriers to entry into the crypto world including the education around wallets, hot and cold, the need to understand centralised exchanges, the complications inherent in DeFi, amongst others. TON helps to solve those problems for those who use Telegram by providing a wallet and apps from within Telegram itself. Wholesale adoption of Web3 powered by cryptos will only happen once users no longer need to know about what is happening in the back end, in the same way that browsing websites does not demand any knowledge of how to code in HTML. The combination of Telegram and TON goes some way to achieving that end. With a ready-made user base, TON might become a stand-out performer during this cycle.

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To start, simply go to Telegram and type in “@wallet”.

You can transfer cryptos in from an external wallet, or an exchange, or you can buy from within the wallet itself using a debit card, or the P2P marketplace. This simple fiat on-ramp, by passing exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, is just one of the simplifications which will drive adoption of TON.

There is a staking option, but with a minimum investment of over $2.5mm to do so, not many readers are likely to find themselves as stakers. There is an LST (liquid staking token) known as tsTON but for now, it is, ahem, rather illiquid. Even small purchases will lose a lot to slippage.

Standard DeFi functions are readily available from within the Telegram Apps Centre, again simplifying the whole process.

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Hamster Kombat is a game that has accumulated an extraordinary 239mm users in under three months. The roadmap for Hamster Kombat includes the creation of its own crypto on TON with an airdrop to players of the game. Telegram founder Pavel Durov articulates a very exciting vision:

“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 arriving, and we are witnessing its arrival in real-time.”

We love a bit of crypto adoption at CC Towers.

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With an FDV of $35bn TON is in the top five blockchains by value. But this is less than 10% of Ethereum’s FDV. Given its potential user base, it is hard to see how TON won’t be phenomenally successful, even if the most eye-catching of its applications to date involves pretending you are a hamster recently recruited as the CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange.

For disclosure reasons, I need to tell you that the CC Treasury recently made its first two investments in TON at a much lower market cap, and I suspect the committee will decide to rotate out of other alts into TON, probably in some size. This, however, is not an incitement to encourage you to get involved, it is merely for information.