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Pantera Capital, managing over $5 billion in assets, has recently made an undisclosed investment in The Open Network (TON), a prominent layer 1 blockchain. Pantera’s move demonstrates its strong belief in TON’s potential to drive widespread crypto adoption, leveraging Telegram’s 900 million users and over 1 trillion monthly views.
“We believe the TON network is still in its early stages and we are excited to see the adoption of the ecosystem and its new features by Telegram users,” Pantera Capital told The Block.
Originally developed by Telegram’s team and rebranded following legal hurdles with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, TON has since made considerable advancements.
The network has become a bustling web3 ecosystem, sharing revenue with channel owners, and facilitating advertising payments in TON. Also, speculations suggest that TON, Haskey Group, and Oyster Labs have joined forces to launch the ‘Universal Basic Smartphone.’
Besides, the TON blockchain has also gained traction recently. Last month, Tether integrated Tether USD (USDT) and Tether Gold (XAUT) onto TON blockchain. This integration expands Tether’s reach to 15 blockchains and unlocks new possibilities for over 900 million Telegram users worldwide. As a result, users can now leverage USDT and XAUT for peer-to-peer payments directly on the TON blockchain and within decentralized applications built on its infrastructure.
Pavel Durov, the co-founder and CEO of Telegram, also announced the company’s plans to tokenize its stickers and emojis, transforming them into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the TON blockchain.
Durov highlighted TON’s scalability as a key factor in this decision. According to him, TON’s ability to handle millions, even hundreds of millions, of transactions, making it a perfect fit for Telegram’s target scale.
Pantera Capital’s latest investment comes as the company is finalizing KYC procedures for a Solana token purchase. The firm is also in talks to raise an additional $1 billion for “Pantera Fund V.” This new fund targets early-stage startups, tokens, and other digital assets.
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