💎 Meta cuts crypto, Durov opens the door to Telegram

Meta removed one of the largest English-speaking crypto groups on Facebook, and Pavel Durov responded by publicly inviting its founder, Jeff Kirdeikis, to move the community over to Telegram.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ A crypto group with 330,000 members and 8 years of history was taken down
⚫️ Founder Jeff Kirdeikis called it another round of “anti-crypto censorship”
⚫️ He offered $1k for an intro to someone who can help restore the group and another $1k to the person inside Meta who does it
⚫️ Plus a $100 reward for a random supporting retweet
⚫️ In parallel, Durov invited him and the community to Telegram as an alternative home base

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ The case highlights the growing tension between Web2 platforms and crypto-native communities
⚫️ For Telegram, it’s another chance to position itself as a place with fewer arbitrary takedowns and clearer rules of engagement
⚫️ For TON, it’s potential inflow of a large trading community into the ecosystem of mini-apps and on-chain services living inside the messenger

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Gifts as boosts: a new utility concept

There’s a proposed model to replace classic user boosts with gift-based progression: each channel gets its own set of gifts required to unlock new levels.

🔝 What’s being proposed
⚫️ Instead of standard boosts, a channel levels up through gifts being sent to it
⚫️ Every channel has a custom pool of required gifts to move up to the next level
⚫️ Levels and perks depend on the number and type of gifts, not on abstract “points”

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Gifts get real utility: they directly impact the growth and status of a channel
⚫️ Creators can design their own mini-economy by choosing which gifts power progression
⚫️ For the community, it’s a clear signal: if you want to boost a channel, you send the right gifts, not just hit a generic boost button

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 TON picks OpenPayd as its global fiat backbone

TON Foundation has selected OpenPayd as its core partner for global fiat operations. The European banking-as-a-service provider will act as the primary fiat infrastructure for the entire TON ecosystem — and TON’s price reacted with a ~4% move up on the news.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ TON Foundation enters a partnership with OpenPayd for worldwide fiat flows
⚫️ OpenPayd becomes the main fiat infrastructure layer for TON
⚫️ TON Foundation CEO Max Kraun calls it an “agile and globally connected financial backbone” and a catalyst for the next growth stage
⚫️ The TON token price jumped roughly 4% following the announcement

🔝 Why it matters
⚫️ TON gets an institutional-grade BaaS partner instead of fragmented fiat integrations
⚫️ It simplifies on/off-ramp setups for wallets, exchanges, mini-apps and payment products inside Telegram
⚫️ A unified fiat backbone lowers friction for users and businesses coming into TON from legacy finance
⚫️ For investors, this is a move toward a more predictable, scalable financial stack around TON, not just on-chain products

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 AlphaTON vs Anduril: “historic investment” turns into a scandal

On December 16, AlphaTON Capital Corp issued a loud press release about a “historic strategic investment” of $30m into Anduril Industries — a major U.S. defense company focused on AI, drones and autonomous systems. The release claimed AlphaTON had become the first public company to hold Anduril shares on its balance sheet and planned to tokenize them via a Telegram mini-app. The very next day, Anduril’s founder publicly denied all of it and accused AlphaTON of misleading investors.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ AlphaTON announced a supposed $30m strategic investment in Anduril and plans to tokenize those shares through a Telegram mini-app
⚫️ The company framed itself as the first public firm holding Anduril equity in its treasury
⚫️ The next day, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey publicly stated that AlphaTON was lying and had no right to use his trademarks
⚫️ An Anduril co-founder added that this looks like a scam — especially coming from a public company

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ For AlphaTON investors, this is a direct hit to trust in any “real-world asset tokenization” stories the company is pushing
⚫️ The case revives an old question for regulators and markets: where does Web3 marketing end and investor deception begin
⚫️ For the TON ecosystem, much depends on how AlphaTON now communicates its tokenization plans via Telegram and how quickly it adjusts the public narrative

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Durov, Britain and “V for Vendetta”

Pavel Durov criticized U.K. plans that would effectively label end-to-end encryption developers as “hostile actors,” comparing them to the totalitarian regime from the movie “V for Vendetta.” The original post was later deleted.

🔝 What happened

⚫️ Durov wrote that 20 years ago the totalitarian Britain from “V for Vendetta” looked like pure fiction
⚫️ Now, with ideas like branding E2E encryption developers as “hostile,” it looks less like fiction and more like a government playbook
⚫️ He noted that the movie is set in 2027 — and that the U.K. seems eager to “meet the deadline”
⚫️ The country is debating laws that put pressure on end-to-end encryption and introduce backdoors for authorities, which Durov calls a threat to privacy

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ The clash around end-to-end encryption is moving into open political confrontation
⚫️ Durov again positions Telegram as a defender of privacy against classic regulatory approaches
⚫️ For the broader Telegram and TON ecosystem, it’s a reminder that regulation around encryption and data can shape products as strongly as market forces

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 MyTonWallet now tracks your portfolio’s real value

MyTonWallet has added a real value chart that shows how the actual value of your holdings has changed over time, taking your balance into account — not just the market price of TON.

🔝 What happened

⚫️ A new real value chart displays portfolio dynamics based on total holdings, not just TON’s price
⚫️ In 2025, the team shipped native apps, dozens of collaborations and 12 major updates
⚫️ MyTonWallet is consolidating its role as one of the key user interfaces in the TON ecosystem

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Users see more than “the TON price chart” — they see how their portfolio value evolved with deposits and withdrawals
⚫️ This is closer to pro-grade analytics: fewer illusions, more focus on net results
⚫️ The pace of MyTonWallet’s development is pushing it toward de facto standard status for a big part of the TON community

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 TON Strategy Company dropped from S&P index

TON Strategy Company (NASDAQ: TONX) has been removed from the S&P Software & Services Select Industry Index after almost five months in the benchmark. TONX now trades around $2.43 — roughly a −63% drop over the past year.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ TON Strategy Company was excluded from the S&P Software & Services Select Industry Index
⚫️ TONX is trading near $2.43, with an annual performance of about −63%
⚫️ In August 2025, Verb Technology Company rebranded into TON Strategy Company and announced a strategy centered on accumulating and holding TON

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Being dropped from the index reduces potential support from index-tracking and passive funds
⚫️ The market is clearly pricing the company’s “TON strategy” at a discount — the TON name alone isn’t enough to sustain valuation
⚫️ For TON ecosystem investors, it’s a reminder that corporate wrappers around the token can be even riskier than the underlying asset itself

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Magnetto: quality Telegram traffic without burning your budget

Over 2.5 million people join Telegram every day — a constant flow of users that can be channeled into bots, channels and mini-apps. Magnetto focuses on turning that raw flow into targeted traffic tailored to your goals.

🔝 What Magnetto does
⚫️ Routes audiences inside Telegram based on your requirements and target profile
⚫️ Delivers subscribers, leads or players instead of “empty” clicks from low-quality buys
⚫️ Helps scale projects without burning budgets on irrelevant traffic

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ With this volume of new users, the real question isn’t “is there traffic?”, but “who can filter and convert it into results?”
⚫️ A competent traffic partner cuts the cost per action and removes chaos from acquisition
⚫️ Instead of spraying budget across random sources, it’s more efficient to work with those who can convert Telegram’s growth into your project’s growth

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Turning Telegram gifts into digital assets on TON

Telegram gifts are becoming more than just a nice gesture — some of them can now be turned into on-chain assets on TON, transferred and auctioned as NFTs.

🔝 What’s happening
⚫️ A subset of gifts can be converted into TON-based NFTs and traded on-chain
⚫️ In under a year, primary sales volume reached $78.6m
⚫️ Secondary market trading volume exceeded $312.2m
⚫️ Over 541,000 gifts are already trading on-chain

🔝 How to turn a gift into a TON NFT

⚫️ Buy a gift with Telegram Stars
⚫️ Upgrade it to a unique collectible
⚫️ Send it on-chain: My Profile → My Gifts → Transfer → “Send via blockchain”

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Gifts become real digital property, not just animated surprises
⚫️ Owners can sell, auction and use them across different platforms in the TON ecosystem
⚫️ Control over the asset stays fully in the user’s hands — access and rights are defined by the wallet, not by the platform

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 How much TON Foundation pays

Public job data now shows rough salary benchmarks for TON Foundation roles, including average yearly compensation and hourly rates across the org.

🔝 What the numbers show
⚫️ Average yearly salaries range from about $18,000 (copywriter) up to $201,000 (AI Developer)
⚫️ Hourly rates span roughly from $9 to $104 per hour
⚫️ Sample average yearly salaries by role:

• AI Developer → $201,000
• Social Media Expert → $153,600
• Recruiter → $149,500
• Marketer → $145,000
• Project Manager → $130,000
• Community Manager → $125,000
• Full Stack Developer → $117,500
• QA Engineer → $105,000
• Designer → $82,500
• Analyst → $80,000

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Gives talent a clearer benchmark for how TON Foundation stacks up against broader Web3 and traditional tech markets
⚫️ Shows strongest pricing power at the AI + engineering intersection, while marketing and community roles are also well above typical Web2 levels
⚫️ Transparent ranges make TON Foundation look more like a mature organization than a “crypto startup with mystery comp”

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Atomic Wallet adds support for TON

Atomic Wallet has announced support for TON, allowing users to buy, swap and store TON directly inside the wallet app. On the news, the TON price briefly jumped around 6% to roughly $1.57.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ TON is now available in Atomic Wallet for purchase, swaps and custody
⚫️ Support is integrated natively, without extra workarounds
⚫️ The market reacted with a short-term ~6% price move up in TON

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Another major multi-chain wallet adds TON, increasing retail entry points
⚫️ The easier it is to buy and hold TON in familiar apps, the lower the friction for new ecosystem participants
⚫️ These integrations usually play out over time: a small initial price spike, followed by a gradual increase in holders

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 72M gifts in a year and −75.8% on UFC Strike

According to Get Gifts, over 72,000,000 gift transfers were made in Telegram this year — equal to 1,800,000,000 Stars (≈ $27,000,000) of on-chain activity. Against that backdrop, the UFC Strike case shows how brutal the secondary market can be.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ Users sent more than 72,000,000 gifts over the year
⚫️ Total volume reached 1,800,000,000 Stars (≈ $27,000,000)
⚫️ UFC Strike gifts are now trading after Pre-Market with a floor of 8.35 TON (≈ $13.71)
⚫️ Base cost per gift is 3,760 Stars (≈ $56.40), implying a loss of about $42.69 (−75.8%) per item

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ The gifts market generates massive volumes, but speculative collections can still end up deeply underwater
⚫️ Heavy on-chain activity doesn’t guarantee that any specific drop will be profitable
⚫️ Telegram gifts are first about utility and fun — and only then about speculation, especially for volatile collections like UFC Strike

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Emoji Stake: Telegram experiments with an in-app emoji casino

In the Android beta of Telegram, references have been found to Emoji Stake — a limited playtest of an emoji-based game platform with virtual betting and dice rolls. The feature hasn’t been officially announced yet and may change before release.

🔝 What’s happening
⚫️ Beta strings describe a game using virtual 💎 currency and 🎲 dice rolls
⚫️ The interface includes a stake input field and a “Save and Roll” button
⚫️ There’s a streak system: the series resets after three rolls or when the stake size changes
⚫️ Players see how many virtual 💎 they win or lose, plus other players’ results
⚫️ The feature is labeled as a “limited playtest of a future emoji gaming platform for a small group of users” with a “Beta” status

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Telegram is testing native casino-style mechanics inside the app, without pushing users to external bots or websites
⚫️ An emoji-game format with virtual currency could become a sandbox for future integrations with the TON ecosystem (games, mini-apps, loyalty mechanics)
⚫️ For now it’s just a beta experiment with virtual stakes — the final public version and economic model are still to be defined

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 AI summarization in Telegram beta: Cocoon enters the UI

Alongside Emoji Stake, the Android beta of Telegram is testing another feature — automatic AI summarization of long channel posts.

🔝 What’s happening
⚫️ A new button appears in the top-right corner of long posts
⚫️ Tapping it replaces the full text with a short summary and key points
⚫️ The original post can be restored with a single tap on the top banner
⚫️ The feature is not active everywhere yet and only works in some channels
⚫️ Observers suggest Cocoon may be powering the AI, providing cheap, privacy-preserving compute without sending data to centralized servers

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Telegram is starting to embed AI features natively into the channel feed, without relying on bots or external sites
⚫️ If the Cocoon guess is correct, this is a real-world case of private AI compute: content processed without the usual Big Tech cloud data drain
⚫️ For the TON ecosystem, it’s another step toward a model where AI infrastructure and the messenger operate as a single platform

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 TON Core: pushing toward near-instant transactions

TON Core is preparing an upgrade that should make transactions feel almost instant — under one second end-to-end — without sacrificing security or decentralization.

🔝 What’s changing under the hood
⚫️ Validators reach consensus on a block in 200–400 ms instead of ~2.5 seconds
⚫️ Blocks propagate across the network in ~100 ms instead of ~700 ms
⚫️ The API returns operation status in 30–100 ms
⚫️ Apps will be able to treat a transaction as confirmed after just 1 confirmation, without waiting for full finality

🔝 How users will feel it

⚫️ You press a button — the result appears almost instantly, and you can immediately submit the next action
⚫️ Finality happens “in the background,” without UX-visible lag
⚫️ All components are already built; now they’re being wired together and pushed to the TON testnet

TON is moving one step closer to feeling faster not just than other blockchains, but than many familiar Web2 services.

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Telegram gifts: new ATH and Pepe frenzy

Telegram gifts hit a new ATH at 80,976,682 TON (≈ $139.28m), up +27.99% over the month, while Plush Pepe leads the high-end action.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ Plush Pepe #1709 sold for 95,200 TON (≈ $166,846), previously bought for 31,500 TON — ≈ $78,646 profit
⚫️ A Chinese whale grabbed 4 more Pepe for 150,287 TON (≈ $261,800); collection floor holds above 6,000 TON
⚫️ In 2 days, 65 frogs were bought for 617,133 TON (≈ $1.08m)
⚫️ Floors are up on Durov’s Caps, Gem Signet, Mini Oscar, Blink Binky; extra premium for “lucky” numbers like 888 and 666
⚫️ New Year gifts were removed; regular bears for 15 Stars are back

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ The gifts market is now a full-blown high-end segment with big checks and whale activity
⚫️ Numerology and regional demand patterns (Chinese buyers) add cultural depth to TON assets
⚫️ Cheap entry via basic gifts remains — the ecosystem is scaling both mass-market and premium tiers

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Crypto Bot cleans up the meme zoo

Crypto Bot is delisting a whole batch of meme tokens: NOT, DOGS, HMSTR, MEMHASH, TRUMP, MAJOR, MELANIA, WIF, MY, CATI, PEPE and BONK. Most of them are down over 90% and trade with almost no liquidity.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ Top-ups, new checks, accounts, giveaways and P2P ads for these tokens are now disabled
⚫️ Until February 15, 2026, users can swap them to USDT or withdraw via wallet
⚫️ Unactivated checks can still be activated and cashed out before the deadline

🔝 Why it matters

⚫️ Crypto Bot is effectively shutting down the illiquid meme segment and removing dead weight from the UI
⚫️ Holders get one last exit window — after that the door closes
⚫️ For the ecosystem, it’s a shift in focus: away from dead meme stories toward tokens with real volume and utility

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Gift whale “leaves NFTs”… or just cashes out?

One of the major Telegram gifts holders decided to offload his collection, citing family and kids — and instantly got a wave of free coverage from channels.

🔝 What happened
⚫️ The whale put a significant part (or most) of his gift collection up for sale
⚫️ In his message he says he always believed in Durov and the Telegram ecosystem and “knew it would explode — it was just a matter of time”
⚫️ Official reason for leaving NFTs: family and children; the story spread as an emotional farewell to the market

🔝 What it might mean
⚫️ There’s a strong case this is classic exit liquidity: selling pieces of the collection at a premium under the narrative of “I’m leaving”
⚫️ The emotional story acts as free marketing for the listings — attention, sympathy and buyer FOMO in one package
⚫️ For the market, it’s a reminder that soft narratives about “quitting for family” often sit right next to hard profit-taking

🤑 TON Insider 🤑

💎 Gift crafting, scammers and whale sell-offs

New gift crafting mechanics are being tested on the server while the market faces both scam cases and large collection sell-offs from whales.

🔝 What we know about crafting
⚫️ Crafting will produce new gift models
⚫️ There is a chance to lose all gifts used in a craft
⚫️ The fewer gifts you put in, the lower the risk; the cap is 4 gifts per craft
⚫️ Cakes are expected to be among the first, and the mechanic overall should reduce supply and potentially push floors higher
⚫️ New rare models can trigger mass burning of cheap gifts and a “race” among dedicated collectors

🔝 Scammers and value loss
⚫️ A Chinese whale received an offer to sell 3 Plush Pepe for around $80,000
⚫️ The deal went through a fake escrow — all gifts were lost (including Plush Pepe #990, #1231, #2816)
⚫️ The case is a reminder: OTC deals without trusted escrow are a straight path to losing your collection

🔝 Market sentiment
⚫️ Some streamers, bloggers and major Chinese collectors are selling their gifts as whole bundles
⚫️ It’s unclear whether this is loss of conviction, profit-taking, or simple fatigue with the market
⚫️ Others are quietly accumulating cheaper gifts, betting on the impact of crafting and future supply squeeze

🔝 Bottom line

Crafting with burn risk and new models reshapes the gift economy: lower supply, higher risk and more game-like incentives. In this environment, security and scam protection matter just as much as picking the right collection.

🤑 TON Insider 🤑