Toncoin (TON) has posted a sharp rally, climbing more than 15% in the past 24 hours and spiking nearly 13% within just 2 hours and 30 minutes. The token is now trading at $3.43, up 15.13% on the day, pushing its market cap to $8.55 billion.
The surge comes amid a significant uptick in trading activity, with 24-hour volume jumping over 195.45% to $419.3 million.
This strong price movement coincides with two major developments: Telegram’s fresh $1.5 billion bond issue and a key hire by the TON Foundation aimed at accelerating the project’s payments strategy.
Earlier this month, Telegram began pitching a bond sale in the U.S., even as its CEO, Pavel Durov remained in France facing preliminary charges for allegedly failing to cooperate with criminal investigations into illegal activity on the platform.
Despite the legal hurdles, Telegram has managed to attract significant investor interest and is expected to raise at least $1.5 billion in its bond issue, according to people familiar with the matter.
The five-year bond will be priced at a 9% yield. Proceeds from the offering will be used to buy back the remaining debt from Telegram’s 2021 bond issue, which is due to mature in March 2026. The company has already repurchased about $400 million of those bonds using cash.
Major investors backing the new bond include existing stakeholders like BlackRock and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, with new participants expected to include hedge-fund firm Citadel.
As with its previous bond sale, investors will have the option to convert their holdings into Telegram equity if the company ever goes public, though an IPO is unlikely in the near term due to Durov’s ongoing legal uncertainty.
While Durov has been released on bail, he remains barred from leaving France without permission. His recent request to visit the U.S. for investor talks was rejected by French prosecutors, who said the reason for the trip was “neither compelling nor justified.”
Telegram has denied wrongdoing, saying it has complied with all binding legal requests. “Up until this day, we don’t understand what we did wrong,” Durov said via video from France during a conference in Oslo on Tuesday.
In parallel, the TON Foundation has taken a major step in strengthening Toncoin’s ecosystem by appointing former Visa executive Nikola Plecas as its vice president of payments.
Plecas is tasked with leading the foundation’s global payments strategy, focusing on partnerships for applications based on TON and Telegram, as well as overseeing the compliance framework.
“Joining TON Foundation represents an incredible opportunity to shape the future of payments on a truly global scale,” Plecas said. “With over a billion users in Telegram and a rapidly evolving wave of innovation taking place on TON, my mission is to unlock seamless, secure, and scalable payment experiences that power the next generation of apps and services.”
“In the first few months, the focus is on shaping a clear payments vision for TON’s ecosystem,” he added.
The TON Foundation’s renewed push into payments, coupled with Telegram’s aggressive financial strategy and user growth—1 billion monthly active users and over 15 million paid subscribers—appears to be restoring market confidence. And investors are taking note, as reflected in Toncoin’s bullish price action.
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