Telegram Launches New Crypto Wallet In Africa, TONS Up To Top 10

Telegram develops crypto wallets for TON. (Photo; Doc. NFTNewsToday)

JAKARTA - Telegram, a popular social messaging app in the world, continues to innovate in the crypto field by launching a new Web3 wallet that is integrated with the The Open Network (TON) network. This wallet was first launched in several countries in Africa, as a first step to expand Telegram's crypto offerings worldwide.

Quoted from Bloomberg, Andrew Rogozov, founder and CEO of The Open Platform, the company that developed the TON blockchain, announced the launch of this new wallet on X, social media previously known as Twitter.

He said that this wallet would be available to certain countries in Africa before developing to other regions such as the Middle East, Europe, and Asia Pacific in the first quarter of 2024. Furthermore, this wallet will be available to other countries around the world in the second quarter of 2024.

"This domain is the result of the hard work of our team, which has a clear vision, a strong team, established partnerships, and secure resources. We want to bring wallets and the entire TON ecosystem around the world, and we believe that this wallet will drive global crypto adoption to an unprecedented level," Rogozov said.

This new wallet is different from the existing crypto wallet on Telegram as an independent bot, which has been used by millions of users from around the world. This new wallet uses Web3 technology, which allows users to interact with decentralized applications (DApp) and decentralized financial solutions (DeFi) built on the TON blockchain.

TON is a blockchain supported by Telegram as its official partner, but operates as an autonomous protocol. TON has a native cryptocurrency called Toncoin (TON), which is one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world by market cap.

TON recently reached an all-time high, driven by the introduction of a new feature on Telegram called Giveaways, which allows channel owners to randomly reward their followers.

On Wednesday, TON was trading at $2.71, the highest level in 11 months after Telegram introduced Giveaways. Previously, Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, used a 200,000-dollar TON (IDR 3.1 billion) to pay Telegram Premium subscriptions for 10,000 users on the platform.

John Hyman, Telegram's Chief Investment Officer, stressed that Telegram remains focused on providing an extraordinary messaging platform and has no intention of entering the crypto world. However, Telegram is committed to providing TONS with the tools and infrastructure needed to serve its 80 million global subscribers.