Telegram, the popular instant messaging app, now lets users send cryptocurrency through Toncoin, a decentralized layer-1 blockchain, directly from chats, within the messaging app.
The TON Foundation, a non-profit association of TON developers which manages the toncoin token, has enabled fee-free payments, sending crypto to other users, using toncoin (TON) in the app. It also has added the ability to buy bitcoin within the app. Earlier this month, TON Foundation raised $1 billion in donations.
The addition could make crypto payments on messaging platforms more mainstream. TON (The Open Network) made the announcement via Twitter, “Telegram now supports Toncoin transactions with no fees attached.”
To get started, users have to add Telegram’s Wallet bot to the attachment menu, which allows them to ‘purchase cryptocurrency by bank card, exchange, and transfer to other wallets.
Toncoin platform boasts over 52 million transactions so far, with over 486,000 wallets, according to the TON Foundation’s website. The project, originally known as the Telegram Open Network (TON), was developed by Telegram CEO Mr. Pavel Durov and his brother Mr. Nikolai in 2018.
But in 2019, the SEC ordered Telegram to halt its sales of Gram, the token linked to the TON blockchain, after saying it failed to register the $1.7 billion in sales collected as part of its pre-Initial Coin Offering (ICO). As a result, Telegram abandoned TON in 2020.
Mr. Durov expressed his support of TON and said that “I’m proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving. TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm.”
