Telegram's Toncoins Skyrocket When WhatsApp Down

JAKARTA – The WhatsApp messaging application has experienced disruptions on October 25 yesterday. The WhatsAppDown hashtag has gone viral on Twitter. The WhatsApp error was experienced by global users. Simultaneously, Telegram's own crypto token, Toncoin (TON), jumped more than 20 percent.

As is known, Telegram is a competitor to WhatsApp as a fellow messaging application. Despite all that, the cryptocurrency developed by Telegram, TON, has actually experienced a significant increase since WhatsApp crashed.

The cryptocurrency Toncoin (TON), which is affiliated with Telegram, grew nearly 10 percent during the failure of its direct messaging competitor. The disruption experienced by WhatsApp also contributed to the surge in searches for the keyword "Telegram" which triggered the increase in the price of TON.

TON and Telegram are independent but friendly projects. Telegram withdrew from development of the TON blockchain platform, which was funded by messenger founder Pavel Durov under the terms of a peace agreement with US regulators in May 2020.

The Open Network team has certain freedoms in implementing Telegram developments. For example, the messenger has integrated the TON crypto wallet with its P2P marketplace, sold a collection of NFT TON Punks and recently announced an auction for short names on Telegram, similar to the Ethereum Name Service domain.

As a Layer 1 blockchain, so far, the number of transactions on the blockchain has reached 85.2 million, with 1.4 million addresses and 232 validators. At the time of writing, the TON cryptocurrency is trading at IDR 28.064. Its price has increased by 15.16 percent in the last 24 hours, according to a CoinMarketCap data report.