MARKET ANALYSIS | The $TON Cryptocurrency Crashes 18% Following Arrest of Telegram Founder

The price of TonCoin ($TON) fell as much as 18% to below $5.53 on August 25 2024 following news that Pavel Durov, the Co-Founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at Le Bourget Airport in France, according to CoinGecko.

The 39-year-old billionaire was arrested under a warrant for offences related to the popular messaging app with investigations surrounding the application’s lack of moderators.

Durov is also accused of failing to take steps to curb criminal uses of Telegram and faces charges of terrorism, trafficking, conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and more.

$TON, the native coin of The Open Network, and originally developed by the Telegram messaging app, experienced a surge in trading volume on the day, above 800% at some point on Sunday [August 25 2024], according to CoinGecko.


Open interest (OI) surged 32% to $303.09 million, according to CoinGlass data. The traders appeared following TON’s price plummeting following the news.

OI is the total number of derivative contracts that have not been settled, such as options or futures. An increase indicates greater confidence among traders in predicting TON’s price direction, whether up or down.

The token has since lost about $2.7 billion in market value, reflecting the uncertainty sparked by the detention of Durov.

That said, TON, which entered the list of the 10 top most valuable cryptocurrencies in April 2024 following a series of exciting developments and innovations in 2024, maintained its 10th position throughout the bleeding on Sunday.

At the time of publication, $TON is trading at $5.73, down 18.9% in the last 7 days, according to CoinGecko.