Something heavy was brewing over St. Patrick’s Day in altcoin exchange markets.
Among the top 10 altcoins by market cap, the 2nd biggest money maker for the 7 days ending Mar. 20 was LINK (with +10%). But Toncoin’s name-checked out this week. TON rallied a massive +37%.
Toncoin (TON) is the native currency for the popular Telegram messaging app for OS, Windows, and Android.
Toncoin Explained in 60 Seconds
Meanwhile, Dogecoin was doing the downward dog pose the week ending Friday, Mar. 21. DOGE posted -3% gains for the 7-day period. And Cardano was making the world work better for ADA short sellers.
The Layer-1 smart contract platform’s native ADA tokens were trading down by -5.3% for the week. At the same time, Solana was trading -3.76% below its level a week earlier.
Overall, Bitcoin’s price flatlined for the week, and its market share among altcoins fell by 70 basis points. So what was Toncoin’s price running on this week as traders piled up TON?
The following five signs played well in crypto markets over the week.
1. French Govt Returns Telegram Founder’s Passport
The French government arrested Telegram’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, last August.
France wanted to investigate Durov over alleged crimes committed by third-party users of his company’s Telegram app. Toncoin prices dropped 20% in 12 hours.
But this month, markets learned that the government had returned Durov’s seized passport and allowed him to leave the country. TON skyrocketed 20% in a matter of minutes upon finding the news.
2. Heavy Hitting VCs Invest $400M in TON
Durov’s release by the authorities in France was a huge morale booster and positive publicity for Toncoin. But, the Layer-1 smart contract platform also made big strides on the business front over the same calendar stretch.
Meanwhile, as Toncoin’s founder left France safely, markets were thrilled to learn of a $400 million investment round in TON by several high-tech venture capitalists.
Backers included Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, Benchmark and Kingsway, and Draper Associates, the TON Foundation announced in a press release.
The gigantic allocation means strong long-term support for Toncoin prices because it hogs up a big chunk of TON’s limited supply of 5.13 billion tokens.
3. Lower Fees, TON Supply Squeeze in March
In addition to a big legal win and a big business win the same week, Toncoin on-chain metrics showed favorable activity on the TON network.
Average transaction and storage fees paid by users daily, for example, rolled back from 15,145 TON on Feb. 25 to 6,295 by Mar. 25, according to data from TONStat. So it’s a cheap time to use the network.
Meanwhile, the network’s growth in on-chain activated wallets continued apace along a steady incline from February.
The network also saw a slowdown in new supplies as daily growth in TON validator rewards remained unchanged from December’s levels following a year of marked growth.
4. Classic Fib Bounce From 34% of Last ATH
This March was a perfect storm for a Toncoin rally delivering alpha ROI that technical chart analysts may have been able to anticipate on the basis of one popular trade signal.
The Fibonacci retracement levels are a technical analysis tool based on the historical record of markets’ tendency to reverse overbought/oversold trends around percentage gains/losses that line up with the Fibonacci ratios commonly found in sets of organized data and throughout nature.
On Mar. 12, around a price of $2.74, TON began to rally from months of losses since its historic all-time high of $8.08 on Jul. 2, 2024. That was near a price level, almost exactly 34% of the ATH price.
34 is the tenth number in the classic Fibonacci sequence.
5. Telegram App Notches 1 Billion Active Users
Meanwhile, as Toncoin approached the sometimes predictive Fibonacci retracement line, the app ecosystem bagged another enormous win in addition to the VC funding round and Durov’s release by French authorities.
The popular Telegram social messaging app crossed the impressive milestone of 1 billion active users. Durov celebrated by posting beef with rival app WhatsApp on his Telegram channel. Markets continued to go wild for Toncoin.
“Ahead of us stands WhatsApp — a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram,” the mobile app and cryptocurrency entrepreneur wrote.
“For years, they’ve desperately tried to copy our innovations while burning billions on lobbying and PR campaigns to slow us down. They failed. Telegram grew, became profitable, and —unlike our competitor — retained its independence.”
Durov also highlighted that Telegram’s parent company made $547 million in profits last year.
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