The TON Foundation released a new bot on April 26 that allows cryptocurrency transactions inside the Telegram client utilizing The Open Network’s token TON.
This new feature will help Telegram’s more than 550 million users, who will be able to send and receive TON without paying any fees, thanks to the blockchain that Telegram had envisioned. Telegram will potentially compete with other social media platforms with this new functionality, such as Twitter, which has supported Bitcoin and Ethereum tipping since last year and recently teamed with Stripe to introduce payment options via the Coinbase-created stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC). Reddit and even Whatsapp, which has a fiat-powered Whatsapp Pay function available in Brazil and India, have used similar techniques.
On April 28, the functionality went live, marking the first day that TON will be accessible for purchase on OKX, a Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange formerly known as OKEx.
According to a statement published with Coindesk by the TON Foundation, consumers will be able to use this payment mechanism to acquire goods and services from a variety of businesses.
“We anticipate that this functionality will extend into consumer to business payments, so that people can easily acquire goods and services by sending toncoin via bots in the Telegram app,”
According to the TON Foundation’s website, the Toncoin platform has processed over 52 million transactions and has over 486,000 wallets. When the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) halted Telegram’s $1.7 billion token issuances for an initial coin offering (ICO), the Toncoin token was created (ICO).
Telegram’s crypto initiatives were revived by the TON Foundation, which was founded by members of the blockchain community. In reality, following the SEC struggle, Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov announced in May 2020 that the firm was abandoning its blockchain project entirely.
