Messaging app Telegram is gaining steam, and founder and CEO Pavel Durov says the company is considering an initial public offering (IPO). That news, revealed Monday, apparently triggered a surge in the price of The Open Network’s Toncoin (TON).
The Open Network began life in 2017 as the Telegram Open Network, but the company dropped the project in 2020 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took issue with its initial coin offering (ICO). But the project has carried on independently, and Telegram is increasingly using and integrating the chain.
That renewed connection between Telegram and TON may have helped fuel the surge on Monday and into early Tuesday, with the price of the cryptocurrency rising as high as $3.84 per according to CoinGecko data. That’s the highest price seen for TON since December 2021, and marks a nearly 38% spike since the beginning of Monday.
Toncoin has since cooled slightly to a current price of $3.70, representing a 19% gain over the past 24 hours and a 37% rise in the last seven days. TON is up 75% over the past month.
In an interview with The Financial Times published Monday, Durov said that Telegram now has 900 million monthly users, up from 500 million in 2021, and that it has pulled in “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of revenue from subscriptions and advertising in recent years.
Durov said that Telegram is nearing profitability, possibly this year or next, and that it has rejected investment offers valued at $30 billion dollars or more. That’s because he would rather pursue an IPO and keep Telegram free of venture capital influence.
“The main reason why we started to monetize is because we wanted to remain independent,” he told The Financial Times. “Generally speaking, we see value in [an IPO] as a means to democratize access to Telegram’s value.”
Durov recently announced that Telegram will share ad revenue with channel owners, and pay it out exclusively via Toncoin. Last fall, The Open Network Foundation launched a self-custody crypto wallet within Telegram, providing a closer integration for users.
Toncoin’s latest pump also comes amid rising buzz around Notcoin, a viral Telegram game that has amassed some 27 million players to date, per data from the app. The simple tap-based game will launch a crypto token (NOT) on The Open Network in the coming weeks and provide an airdrop to active players.
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The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.