Explained
Looking for love lost $36.9 million to crypto scammers: A story of how Axis Digital turned sweet words into stolen coins and laundered it all to Cambodia.
Telegram News
Founded in 2013 by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, Telegram is a cloud-based encrypted messaging service with over 400 million users. Through its purported security and strict adherence to principles of censorship-resistance and privacy, the Telegram messenger app has become a popular choice for individuals seeking secure communication channels, much to the dismay of governments and regimes around the world.
The company made waves when it announced that it was building a blockchain and cryptocurrency system, called the Telegram Open Network, or TON. The project sought to address the scalability bottlenecks of existing blockchains and integrate TON into its 400-million-plus user base. In early 2018, the project raised $1.7 billion through several rounds of private sales in an initial coin offering.
As the largest crowdsale in the space to date, TON quickly caught the attention of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. When the network was about to launch, the SEC halted the distribution of TON’s GRAM tokens to investors, citing the assets as an unregistered securities offering and questioning Telegram’s intent given that the Durov brothers had essentially been funding the platform without baking in any revenue model.
The TON codebase has since become open source, with other initiatives picking up the torch.
The SEC vs. Telegram case has vast implications for the future of cryptocurrency regulation moving forward.
- News
The NFT lead at the TON blockchain said Snoop Dogg’s sold-out NFT launch could “be the start of a new NFT Narrative.”
5196 - News
The TON Foundation could have avoided its golden visa controversy in the UAE with a brief legal review, a local lawyer told Cointelegraph.
2989 - News
After TON claimed a staking program would offer golden visas for holders to enter the United Arab Emirates, the country’s news agency shot down the idea of a partnership.
31351 - News
Changpeng Zhao is skeptical of the new offer promising a UAE Golden Visa to TON stakers.
10410 - Recap
Football is the world’s most popular sport, yet its billions of fans have historically been spectators rather than active participants with a real stake in the game.
27138 - News
The Telegram founder will once again be allowed to travel to Dubai for a short period before returning to France, where his case is ongoing.
3179 - News
According to the Telegram founder, France’s political leaders continue to make poor choices regarding censorship.
7069 - News
Telegram mini-games reached a zenith in 2024, but the TON blockchain still averages over 2.1 million active wallets.
3876 - News
By applying a TradFi and DeFi combination, Affluent aims to allow users to earn interest in a manner as simple as depositing assets with a single click via Telegram.
3530 - News
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Pavel Durov’s first since being indicted on six charges in 2024, said his company did nothing wrong.
3742 - News
Representatives for The Open Network (TON) said the outage was caused by an error in the masterchain dispatch queue and was resolved.
11517 - News
The messaging platform will use most of the proceeds to repay existing bondholders, with the remainder allocated as working capital to support ongoing operations.
9506 - News
xAI’s Grok could soon be accessible in Telegram and will offer chats, text editing, chat and document summaries, inbox agents, group chat moderation and more.
6614 - News
Nikola Plecas joins TON Foundation to lead its global payments strategy as the network scales for Telegram’s massive user base.
9368