Recently, another big shot in our crypto industry has been staked for mining, he is Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and Ton.
Although he is out on bail now, he still cannot leave France. He will be waiting for trial in France like Huawei's Meng Wanzhou in Canada.
How important is this person?
Telegram is now the fourth most popular social software in the world, with 900 million monthly active users, second only to WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook.
Therefore, Pavel's status in the traditional Internet world is probably equivalent to that of Zuckerberg or Ma Huateng.
But his position in the encryption industry is also clear. After he was arrested, the market value of Ton was still more than 10 billion US dollars, and FDV was close to 30 billion.
This volume can also rank among the top ten cryptocurrencies.
Why was Pavel arrested, and what impact will it have on the TON ecosystem?
Early life
In fact, Pavel’s arrest was not a sudden event, because the Telegram product has been accompanied by various controversies since its inception.
Before founding Telegram, Pavel Durov founded the Russian version of Facebook, called VK.
When Pavel founded VK, he was only 22 years old.
By 2014, VK had more than 100 million monthly active users, which means that every Russian with access to the Internet is a VK user.
But in the same year, VKontakte announced that Pavel was no longer the CEO. The reason behind this was speculated to be that the Russian government wanted to control the VK social networking site and therefore vacated his position in the company.
During the fight for VK, Pavel left this famous photo and never returned to Russia. He started his life as a global citizen and founded Telegram.
Pavel first became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis in 2015, and then of France and the United Arab Emirates in 2021.
Perhaps because of the previous unpleasant experience with VK, the product Telegram is also accompanied by a deep imprint of defending freedom of speech and claims to keep users' social content confidential.
In many countries where freedom of speech is controlled, Telegram has always been a good choice; but Telegram has also become the choice of many crimes. The direct reason for Pavel's arrest this time was because he was accused by the French police of the following crimes: terrorism, illegal drug trafficking, fraud and sexual assault of minors, and Telegram lacked cooperation with the French government.
Unexpectedly, he was not arrested in authoritarian Russia, but was arrested in free France.
After this incident, Russian State Duma Deputy Chairman Davankov called on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take action to rescue Durov, indicating that this incident has gone beyond the legal level and begun to involve the field of international politics.
Musk and other technology giants have also begun to support Pavel.
While other Internet social software went public to cash in, Pavel did not choose to go public in order to uphold his belief in freedom of speech; in order to protect user privacy, he did not sell user data for advertising, but instead continued to support the development of Telegram through his personal property.
Therefore, the Telegram team currently has only a few dozen employees, which is a rare gem in the Internet industry.
Embrace encryption
As a business genius, how could he make a profit at a loss?
Since 2017, Pavel has tried to embrace blockchain, and in 2018, Telegram officially used the TON project for ICO, but the token used at the time was grams, raising $1.7 billion. Such a large ICO is still a record for crypto ICOs.
TON chain is different from other chains. It has a strong technical foundation. TON has realized the popular modular blockchain several years ago.
At this point, I have to mention Pavel’s genius brother, Nikolai Durov. It is said that he wrote the original white paper of TON, but the name of TON was still Telegram Open Network at that time.
If Pavel is a business genius, then his brother Nikolai is a technical genius. Nikolai won the gold medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad for three consecutive years in 1996, 1997 and 1998.
Moreover, VK, which was mentioned at the beginning, as well as the current Telegram and Ton, were all co-founded by the brothers. The younger brother is the CEO, while the older brother focuses on technology.
Moreover, the two brothers have the same father and mother. Both of their parents are highly educated university professors. Their genes are indeed strong and both of their children are geniuses.
Maybe he thinks his genes are really excellent. Pavel even donated sperm and gave birth to more than 100 babies.
It is said that TON raised 1.7 billion US dollars through ICO in 2018, but only one year later, in 2019, the SEC jumped out to accuse Telegram of issuing unregistered securities.
After long-term communication and legal struggle with the SEC, Telegram announced in May 2020 that it would stop the development of TON and agreed to pay a settlement of US$18.5 million, while promising to return the funds to investors.
After this setback, the TON project changed the name of the original Telegram Open Network to the current The Open Network in 2022.
In name, TON chose to continue to develop in the form of a non-profit organization, that is, the establishment of the TON Foundation (The Open Network Foundation).
At this point, TON has become what it is today. Everyone knows the relationship between TON and Telegram, but Telegram refuses to admit that it has any relationship with TON, but it does not prevent it from providing various support in function development.
This is what it means to make a fortune in silence, right?
According to the current official description, TON and Telegram are now in a strategic partnership. Telegram has integrated the TON wallet into its application and allows users to use TON to pay for advertising and share in-app advertising revenue.
Ton Ecosystem Starts Again
After TON changed its name to The Open Network, it can be said that it started from scratch again.
Simply put, doing things can be divided into three lines: making money, doing business, and getting users!
Make money
After all, if you want to do such a big business, you can't do it without money.
Let’s first look at TON’s private placement:
Although most of the financing amounts have not been disclosed, it is certain that the amount of funds raised is definitely not small.
For example, in the most recent round of financing on May 2 this year, there was only one investor, the famous Pantera. This fund claimed that TON was their largest investment.
How big is this “biggest deal in history”?
Pantera is a crypto fund established in 2013. It has only led a few well-known large-scale investments in history. One of them was in 2022 when it led the investment in CoinDCX, a well-known Indian exchange, with an investment amount of US$130 million.
Another time, it led the investment in Mantle, and invested 230 million US dollars together with Dragonfly and Founders Fund, a well-known Silicon Valley fund.
If there is more, it would be the investment in Bakkt in 2020, with a financing amount of 300 million. Although it did not lead that round, Pantera ranked first, and the average allocation of six institutions was 50 million.
Therefore, Da Piaoliang speculates that the amount of Pantera's investment in TON this time should be around 100 million US dollars.
Moreover, the TON token is now available on all mainstream exchanges, and the amount of purchase by retail investors may be more than that of private placements.
2. Do business
So what business does the TON ecosystem engage in?
Currently, the TON ecosystem has unique advantages in three areas: community/game/payment (stable currency)
Corresponding to the official statement, it is mini program/GameFi/Defi
game
According to an insider of a well-known exchange, the NOT mini-game previously officially supported by TON has brought long-awaited new users to the exchanges, with the number of new first-time recharge users being 200 times that of other tokens during the same period!
Community
In terms of community, TON recently launched its first community meme, which may bring about a meme craze on tg.
But there may be many more types of communities supported by Ton, such as:
In fact, this is just copying WeChat.
The money earned from writing for public accounts is the creator economy;
If we engage in e-commerce in tg, isn’t that micro-business?
Aren’t all the various daily/community management tools the same as those used to spread the virus and cause community fission?
Therefore, various gameplays on WeChat may happen again on tg.
Payment
However, Da Piaoliang believes that the most important thing to truly promote the implementation of the entire TON ecosystem is TON's layout in the payment field.
Without WeChat payment, most ecological scenarios would not be sustainable.
Currently, TON has been connected to multiple third-party payment service platforms, allowing merchants to accept payments in various ways.
Now TON's wallet Wallet has been successfully connected to Telegram, and Russia, which has the largest user base of tg, has been proposed to use SWIFT. It is possible that these users' international payments will have to rely on encrypted payments.
Starting from September this year, Russia also allowed cryptocurrencies to be used for cross-border transactions and exchange transactions, which may provide policy support for the payment scenarios of the TON ecosystem.
3. Engage users
With money and good business progress, it can be said that the entire industry has set a small goal in Ton, which is to bring 500 million users to the chain by 2028!
What does 500 million users mean? There are only 500 million crypto users in the world. If Ton achieves its small goal, wouldn’t it have to double the number of crypto users by itself?
The goal is so ambitious and the actions taken are swift and decisive.
In May of this year, the dot-dot-dot mini-game NOT was released and listed on major exchanges around the world, which then started a craze for TG mini-games, and in one fell swoop, the daily active users of the TON chain surpassed Ethereum. It now ranks second among the mainstream public chains after Solana.
Currently, most of these users are brought in by small games. Now with the release of memes like dogs, it is very likely that the number of daily active users will surpass solana in one fell swoop.
After all, in terms of the number of users, no current encryption product can rival Telegram.
Let’s take a look at the number of users of ecological projects. These data would be impossible to achieve without Telegram:
Telegram has also benefited from the wealth effect brought by encryption. The number of users in emerging countries has begun to surge, and the MAU has increased by 100 million in the past year.
Earning Opportunities
So what investment opportunities are there for ordinary people like us?
The first one is of course the TON coin. If you are optimistic about its future development, you can still invest in it.
What is the impact of the founder being arrested? Friends, most of the founders of the top 10 crypto tokens are in jail or disappeared, okay?
And isn’t there Pavel’s genius brother Nikolai?
It is said that Pavel himself does not own real estate and private jets, which are standard equipment for wealthy people. He only "owns" Telegram, some Bitcoin and Toncoin.
When Telegram had not yet gone public and needed to pay for subsidies out of its own pocket, if you also had Bitcoin and TON, then congratulations, your wealth would rise and fall with the business genius Pavel.
If the money-making opportunities only extend here, I believe everyone will be dissatisfied.
Da Piaoliang also told everyone an opportunity to ambush, which is the meme Lu Mao on Telegram
This meme-based game is much easier to play than the mini-game-based game. You just need to ambush in the major Telegram channels. With the further development of the community ecology, the major Telegram channels may start issuing coins to OG like dogs did this time. Wouldn’t it be a waste of money?
This method of plucking hair is not only cost-free, but also time-saving.
