Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, currently holds Toncoin (TON), the native token of The Open Network blockchain – a platform providing web3 infrastructure for the Telegram application.
The TON Foundation stated on X on Monday that “although we cannot disclose the scale of the investment, this support means a lot.”
Manuel Stotz – Chairman of TON Foundation, Founder & CEO of Kingsway Capital, and soon-to-be Executive Chairman of Verb Technology (a digital asset management company focused on TON) – said that Coinbase Ventures purchased TON “directly from Telegram,” but declined to disclose the value of the deal.
A representative from Coinbase Ventures confirmed to The Block that the firm has “made a long-term venture investment in TON,” but did not disclose who the seller was, when the transaction took place, or the purchase amount. They stated: “Token investments are a common structure with on-chain projects and align with how many venture funds participate in this ecosystem.” Other early investors in TON listed by the TON Foundation include Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Ribbit Capital.
Other notable investors in TON include Pantera Capital, Ryze Labs (formerly Sino Global Capital), and Animoca Brands. According to The Block, these funds have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into TON, primarily due to the unique advantage of integration with Telegram – the messaging app with over 1 billion monthly active users.
Yat Siu – Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands – once remarked that TON is “a distribution strategy,” while noting that the scale of Telegram is the biggest advantage but also poses a risk of dependency.
Coinbase Ventures' investment comes amid a series of notable news related to TON recently. Last week, Verb Technology listed on Nasdaq announcing a private fundraising of $558 million with Kingsway Capital to become the first public company to use Toncoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, while also planning to rebrand as TON Strategy Co. Last month, the developer of TON – The Open Platform – raised $28.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Ribbit Capital, with a valuation of $1 billion.
Currently, Toncoin is the 26th largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of approximately $8.7 billion and a fully diluted value of about $17.4 billion, according to data from Bitcoin Magazine.
