Bullish Shift For TON: Price Breaks Above $2 Following Telegram CEO’s Gram News

Toncoin (TON) roared increased on Monday, climbing about 11% and pushing above roughly $2.30 earlier within the day earlier than cooling barely. The bounce got here after Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov introduced that The Open Network’s native token can be renamed from Toncoin to “Gram” over the following three weeks.

TON Shift To ‘Gram’

Durov said the rebranding is greater than advertising and marketing. “TON’s native forex is changing into Gram,” he wrote, including that “Gram was the unique title of TON’s forex within the first white paper.” 

In his message, he described the transfer as a return to the community’s roots and the beginning of what he known as “a brand new chapter.” He additionally framed the rename as “step 4 of seven to Make TON Great Again,” referring to a broader roadmap he has disclosed in his private Telegram channel since May. 

Durov said that the blockchain will stay known as TON, and that the three-week transition is not going to require holders, validators, or DeFi integrations to take motion. Existing TON balances, he stated, will proceed to perform usually and can commerce beneath the GRAM ticker as soon as exchanges and wallets replace their programs.

As reported by The Defiant, the Gram label carries the heaviest authorized baggage in TON’s timeline. Telegram beforehand raised about $1.7 billion in two presale rounds in 2018 for “Gram” tokens that had been by no means finally issued. 

Later, in October 2019, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) obtained an emergency motion halting the providing, describing it as an unregistered securities sale.

The authorized fallout continued right into a later decision. A settlement reached in June 2020 required Telegram to return $1.2 billion to traders and pay an $18.5 million penalty. 

Three More Steps Coming

Durov’s announcement additionally factors to “step 4” as a part of a sequence of upgrades he pushed by after taking up validator duties in May. Under these earlier steps, the community rolled out Catchain 2.0, aimed toward enabling sub-second block finality. 

Durov additionally highlighted Telegram’s position in validation, saying that Telegram itself grew to become the community’s largest validator with thousands and thousands of tokens staked through the messenger’s personal infrastructure.

Still, there may be extra to come back. Durov stated three extra steps stay in his seven-step roadmap, although he has not publicly outlined what these steps will contain.

Since Durov’s announcement earlier within the day, TON trades at $2.11 on the time of writing. Even with the pullback, the token remains to be displaying main good points—up about 56% over the month-to-month interval—although it stays roughly 75% beneath its all-time high of $8.25.

Featured picture created with OpenArtwork; chart from TradingView.com