REDKK
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Toncoin brought snacks to the party š„³
Telegram turns 12 - and Toncoin brought snacks to the party š
Happy birthday, Telegram. Twelve years ago on August 14, 2013 a privacy-loving messenger quietly elbowed its way into global chat rooms, sticker wars, and the occasional [āwho just sent a 50-MB videoā] panic. Fast-forward to August 14, 2025, and Telegram is no longer just a place to roast your friends in group chats - itās a payments-and-mini-app playground where a blockchain called TON and its native token Toncoin (TON) have spent the last two years trying to turn memes into money and chats into commerce.
Below: a slightly irreverent, crypto-native postmortem of how Toncoin has affected Telegram from roughly August 2023 ā August 2025 - the era when ājust a messengerā stopped cutting it.
From stickers to wallets: the UX glow-up.
If your grandpaās WhatsApp still thinks payments mean āIāll Venmo you later,ā Telegram went full sci-fi. Over the past two years Telegram has folded a native TON wallet into the app experience and shipped wallet features that let people hold, send, trade, and even stake assets without leaving the chat UI - the sorts of moves that make onboarding non-crypto folks marginally less terrifying. The rollout that pushed this into the mainstream in the U.S. happened in July 2025, when the built-in wallet began reaching tens of millions of users.
What that means in plain terms: sending money can be as frictionless as sending a meme - and thatās a game changer for person-to-person payments, tips inside channels, and creators selling things directly to audiences. Itās subtle, but when payments feel like chat, adoption follows.
User base + liquidity = memecoin fever + real-world rails.
Telegramās scale matters. Rolling a wallet to tens of millions of users (BraveNewCoin and CoinDesk reported the mid-2025 U.S. rollout hitting ~87 million eligible users) instantly gives Toncoin a potential on-ramp far bigger than many entire blockchain projects can dream of. That native distribution and ease of use sparked both practical flows (payments, remittances, buying NFTs/goods) and the more chaotic "let's launch a meme token on TON" economy that crypto communities both love and fear.
The effect: more on-chain activity, more listings, and - predictably - more bots trying to pump tiny token projects in public groups. Welcome to the carnival.
Infrastructure and tooling matured (so devs actually care).
Over the last two years the TON ecosystem added real plumbing: DNS-like name services, storage, proxying, and wallet upgrades enabling trading and staking directly from wallets. Thatās the quiet, boring part that matters: better dev tools mean more dapps, more chance for real utility (games, marketplaces, social payments), and less āfragile GitHub demoā syndrome. Cointelegraph summarized multiple upgrades that positioned TON as more than a Telegram pet project - itās becoming a usable layer for payments and lightweight dapps.
Translation: where 2022-style Toncoin talk was mostly fanfic and techno-optimism, 2023-2025 delivered actual software and integrations that people can use without compiling Rust on a Friday night.
Markets noticed - and sometimes reacted.
Markets are emotional. News that Telegram pushed wallet features into the main app, especially for U.S. users, led to immediate price interest and modest rallies in Toncoin as traders priced in adoption and liquidity improvements. Toncoinās market numbers in mid-2025 show it hanging in the top-20 discussion with a multi-billion dollar market cap - the kind of validation that turns crypto Twitter takes into slightly less-embarrassing dinner conversation.
(Yes, markets are volatile. No, Toncoin is not a guaranteed ticket to Lambo-ville. But adoption news moves price; thatās just how the game works.)
Business model: Telegramās bottom line and the āecosystemā bump.
This is the part where corporate spreadsheets get involved. Financial reporting and analysis in 2024-25 showed Telegramās revenues benefiting from āpartnerships and ecosystemā plays - basically, turning an app into an app-store-like platform can make money. The Financial Times noted that ecosystem partnerships, including integrations tied to TON, contributed substantially to improved results. In short: Toncoin and the TON ecosystem have started to be more than community theater - theyāre visible in business metrics.
The community & culture effect (the spicy stuff).
Toncoin didnāt just affect tech stacks and balance sheets - it changed culture inside Telegram. Channels now host tip jars, creators accept TON, groups coordinate NFT drops, and yes - there are more meme coins than you can shake a neon pixel at. For the crypto crowd that lives for alpha and irony, TON inside Telegram is perfect: fast chats, instant sharing, and a marketplace of ideas (and tokens) that moves at chat speed.
Risks, annoyances, and the part where we all get regulatory letters.
Letās be honest: coupling a global messaging app with crypto raises questions. Compliance, fraud, privacy trade-offs, and the inevitable scams are real. Telegram historically prized privacy and speed; adding on-ramps, off-ramps, and trading features forces a dance with regulators and custodial partners. The ecosystem responded by building better tooling and treasury strategies to support liquidity, but the regulatory weather remains something projects must watch closely. (No one wants a billion-user app getting a surprise subpoena - not great for birthdays).
Is Toncoin the cake or the sprinkles ?
On Telegramās 12th birthday, Toncoin looks less like a gimmick and more like a strategic layer: itās improved payments UX, created direct commerce paths in chats, and nudged Telegramās business model toward platform monetization. In the last two years the biggest wins were infrastructure hardening (real features, wallets, staking), a major user-facing rollout (mid-2025 U.S. wallet expansion), and the ripple effects on liquidity and on-chain activity. Those are concrete wins - the sort of things that happen more slowly than a meme pump, but matter more long term.
If youāre in crypto and you use Telegram: expect more mini-apps, more tipping, and more chaotic token launches - plus genuine utility for creators and communities who want to monetize without leaving chat. If youāre not in crypto but use Telegram: be careful, read the small print, and donāt accept a tip from someone promising ā1 TON for your soul.ā
Happy 12th, Telegram. Hereās to another year of stickers, secret chats - and the occasional on-chain rug pull that gives us content for a full week of memes. š
#Toncoin #Telegram
$TON
$BTC
$ETH
Happy birthday, Telegram. Twelve years ago on August 14, 2013 a privacy-loving messenger quietly elbowed its way into global chat rooms, sticker wars, and the occasional [āwho just sent a 50-MB videoā] panic. Fast-forward to August 14, 2025, and Telegram is no longer just a place to roast your friends in group chats - itās a payments-and-mini-app playground where a blockchain called TON and its native token Toncoin (TON) have spent the last two years trying to turn memes into money and chats into commerce.
Below: a slightly irreverent, crypto-native postmortem of how Toncoin has affected Telegram from roughly August 2023 ā August 2025 - the era when ājust a messengerā stopped cutting it.
From stickers to wallets: the UX glow-up.
If your grandpaās WhatsApp still thinks payments mean āIāll Venmo you later,ā Telegram went full sci-fi. Over the past two years Telegram has folded a native TON wallet into the app experience and shipped wallet features that let people hold, send, trade, and even stake assets without leaving the chat UI - the sorts of moves that make onboarding non-crypto folks marginally less terrifying. The rollout that pushed this into the mainstream in the U.S. happened in July 2025, when the built-in wallet began reaching tens of millions of users.
What that means in plain terms: sending money can be as frictionless as sending a meme - and thatās a game changer for person-to-person payments, tips inside channels, and creators selling things directly to audiences. Itās subtle, but when payments feel like chat, adoption follows.
User base + liquidity = memecoin fever + real-world rails.
Telegramās scale matters. Rolling a wallet to tens of millions of users (BraveNewCoin and CoinDesk reported the mid-2025 U.S. rollout hitting ~87 million eligible users) instantly gives Toncoin a potential on-ramp far bigger than many entire blockchain projects can dream of. That native distribution and ease of use sparked both practical flows (payments, remittances, buying NFTs/goods) and the more chaotic "let's launch a meme token on TON" economy that crypto communities both love and fear.
The effect: more on-chain activity, more listings, and - predictably - more bots trying to pump tiny token projects in public groups. Welcome to the carnival.
Infrastructure and tooling matured (so devs actually care).
Over the last two years the TON ecosystem added real plumbing: DNS-like name services, storage, proxying, and wallet upgrades enabling trading and staking directly from wallets. Thatās the quiet, boring part that matters: better dev tools mean more dapps, more chance for real utility (games, marketplaces, social payments), and less āfragile GitHub demoā syndrome. Cointelegraph summarized multiple upgrades that positioned TON as more than a Telegram pet project - itās becoming a usable layer for payments and lightweight dapps.
Translation: where 2022-style Toncoin talk was mostly fanfic and techno-optimism, 2023-2025 delivered actual software and integrations that people can use without compiling Rust on a Friday night.
Markets noticed - and sometimes reacted.
Markets are emotional. News that Telegram pushed wallet features into the main app, especially for U.S. users, led to immediate price interest and modest rallies in Toncoin as traders priced in adoption and liquidity improvements. Toncoinās market numbers in mid-2025 show it hanging in the top-20 discussion with a multi-billion dollar market cap - the kind of validation that turns crypto Twitter takes into slightly less-embarrassing dinner conversation.
(Yes, markets are volatile. No, Toncoin is not a guaranteed ticket to Lambo-ville. But adoption news moves price; thatās just how the game works.)
Business model: Telegramās bottom line and the āecosystemā bump.
This is the part where corporate spreadsheets get involved. Financial reporting and analysis in 2024-25 showed Telegramās revenues benefiting from āpartnerships and ecosystemā plays - basically, turning an app into an app-store-like platform can make money. The Financial Times noted that ecosystem partnerships, including integrations tied to TON, contributed substantially to improved results. In short: Toncoin and the TON ecosystem have started to be more than community theater - theyāre visible in business metrics.
The community & culture effect (the spicy stuff).
Toncoin didnāt just affect tech stacks and balance sheets - it changed culture inside Telegram. Channels now host tip jars, creators accept TON, groups coordinate NFT drops, and yes - there are more meme coins than you can shake a neon pixel at. For the crypto crowd that lives for alpha and irony, TON inside Telegram is perfect: fast chats, instant sharing, and a marketplace of ideas (and tokens) that moves at chat speed.
Risks, annoyances, and the part where we all get regulatory letters.
Letās be honest: coupling a global messaging app with crypto raises questions. Compliance, fraud, privacy trade-offs, and the inevitable scams are real. Telegram historically prized privacy and speed; adding on-ramps, off-ramps, and trading features forces a dance with regulators and custodial partners. The ecosystem responded by building better tooling and treasury strategies to support liquidity, but the regulatory weather remains something projects must watch closely. (No one wants a billion-user app getting a surprise subpoena - not great for birthdays).
Is Toncoin the cake or the sprinkles ?
On Telegramās 12th birthday, Toncoin looks less like a gimmick and more like a strategic layer: itās improved payments UX, created direct commerce paths in chats, and nudged Telegramās business model toward platform monetization. In the last two years the biggest wins were infrastructure hardening (real features, wallets, staking), a major user-facing rollout (mid-2025 U.S. wallet expansion), and the ripple effects on liquidity and on-chain activity. Those are concrete wins - the sort of things that happen more slowly than a meme pump, but matter more long term.
If youāre in crypto and you use Telegram: expect more mini-apps, more tipping, and more chaotic token launches - plus genuine utility for creators and communities who want to monetize without leaving chat. If youāre not in crypto but use Telegram: be careful, read the small print, and donāt accept a tip from someone promising ā1 TON for your soul.ā
Happy 12th, Telegram. Hereās to another year of stickers, secret chats - and the occasional on-chain rug pull that gives us content for a full week of memes. š
#Toncoin #Telegram
$TON
$BTC
$ETH
Disclaimer: Includes third-party opinions. No financial advice. May include sponsored content.Ā See T&Cs.
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