Telegram Now Lets Users Send Cryptocurrencies Through TON Blockchain Spinoff

Telegram Now Lets Users Send Cryptocurrencies Through TON Blockchain Spinoff

Telegram now lets users send Tonecoin, a cryptocurrency created from Telegram's abandoned blockchain effort, directly from the chat messaging app (via a protocol). TON (The Open Network) announced in a post on Twitter that Telegram now supports Toncoin transactions without any fees.

TON includes a short video showing how crypto transactions work on the platform. To get started, you'll need to add Telegram's Wallet bot, which allows you to "buy, exchange and transfer cryptocurrencies from bank cards to other wallets" in your attachments menu.

When you're ready to send crypto, you can drag the wallet from your attachments menu during the chat, enter the tonecoin you want to send, confirm all the details, and then press "Send." Your recipient will receive Tonecoin via chat.

In 2020, Telegram shut down its own cryptocurrency operations after facing pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The project, originally known as the Telegram Open Network (TON), was developed in 2018 by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai. A year later, the SEC ordered Telegram to stop selling Gram, a token linked to the TON blockchain. , after saying it failed to register $1.7 billion in sales collected as part of its pre-initial coin offering (ICO).

Even after Telegram abandoned the TON project, a group of developers kept it alive by renaming it The Open Network and rebranding Gram as TonCoin. Durov expressed his support for the project last December, saying, “I am proud that the technology we have created is alive and evolving… TON is still ahead of everyone else in the blockchain space.” Earlier this month, the TON Foundation managed to raise $1 billion in donations.