One might think that with a billion users, Telegram and its TON cryptocurrency would be world-beating. But just like many other cryptocurrencies, TON hasn’t performed well over the past year as crypto winter winds seem to be blowing hard.
The blockchain lost nearly $700 million in TVL since its 2024 peak. So, is TON dead or the greatest comeback yet to come?
The Toncoin Tragedy
According to data aggregator CoinGecko, the price of TON is down 67% over the past year. That’s quite a cooling off for TON.
Previously, Telegram-based meme coins such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat had led to Toncoin hitting an all-time high of over $8 in June 2024.
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While the price of TON hasn’t performed as well as those 2024 salad days, there is still forward motion in terms of development within the Telegram ecosystem.
A favorable US environment led to Telegram Wallet becoming accessible to Americans in July 2025.
In November 2025, Coinbase finally listed TON on its exchange, a likely nod to the messaging app’s roughly 100 million users in the United States.
Now, as 2026 rolls out, Telegram is bringing along AI – and TON – into the future.
A TON of DAT-titude
A sign of a maturing TON is that there are now several associated Digital Asset Treasuries, or DATs, operating around the ecosystem. Most well-known is the Manuel Stotz-run TON Strategy (NASDAQ: TONX).
But there’s also AlphaTON (NASDAQ: ATON). rebranded from Portage Biotech in September 2025 and helping to hopefully spearhead a TON-AI evolution.
At the heart of this is the decentralized protocol Cocoon AI, which Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced in late 2025.
AlphaTON is helping scale the decentralized AI network by securing a $46 million deal for NVIDIA GPUs to compete with centralized players like OpenAI and xAI, among others.
“In the way that I see it, when I look at the biggest super apps in the world, most of them have their own AI,” AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser told BeInCrypto.
The big difference between many centralized AI players and crypto-backed decentralized ones is the self-sustaining economy they create.
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Organizations like AlphaTON are providing computing services for developers who want to build Cocoon AI-based apps within Telegram.
But in a novel twist, to access Cocoon AI, developers have to pay for services in TON. This is not unlike the Bittensor-style economics where miners are providing the decentralized AI computing power while users must pay for the services in the Bittensor native TAO token.
The Decentralized AI Economy
Building economic value for cryptocurrencies like TON by increasing demand could boost their prices. It’s something AlphaTON and strategic advisor and Skybridge Capital Founder Anthony Scaramucci told BeInCrypto he finds appealing.
Having been White House Communications director for the first Trump Administration for ten days or, “like seconds, actually – it’s 954,000 seconds,” as Scaramucci likes to say, he’s big-time into various different cryptocurrency efforts and isn’t dismayed by market doldrums.
Bitcoin price performance over the past year. Source: CoinGecko
“We frankly did get hit with a dark winter October 10th for all of the crypto, that would include Bitcoin,” Scaramucci told BeInCrypto.
His firm, Skybridge, has been a major backer of TON – even before crypto’s recent turmoil.
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“I am a believer in a multi-chain society and multi-chain roles.” Mooch believes he can help AlphaTON’s effort strategically. “I signed on as a strategic advisor. We’re offering some marketing support. We’re offering some networking.”
Kaiser, the AlphaTON CEO, paints a bright future for the TON-Telegram-AI synergies, mentioning the custodial Telegram Wallet as a huge driver of a next-generation economy that can exist – all within the app itself.
“There’s over a billion monthly active users on Telegram, and there’s over 200 million users of the wallet,” Kaiser noted.
AI in the Superapp
When thinking about the actual application of consumer artificial intelligence products, most of them, aside from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, live within existing services.
Google’s Gemini is already inside of its Search product, XAI powers X’s Grok, and Meta AI works within Facebook, WhatsApp plus Instagram.
“In the way that I see it, when I look at the biggest super apps in the world, most of them have their own AI,” noted Kaiser.
Although Telegram’s Cocoon AI launched with minimal buzz, it has a chance to grow over time inside the Telegram “superapp” platform – a term that’s now popular to use for multifunction apps. Like Telegram.
That’s the AlphaTON play, according to Kaisier.
“We raised our first PIPE in order to buy a TON treasury, which is staking and validating and earning TON returns,” she noted.
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AI as an industry is expected to grow to over $900 billion in 2026, according to data aggregator AI Statistics.
“Now, being able to earn TON by providing GPUs to do AI is another way of us earning TON. And then we are also staking those revenues to earn TON on returns.” So AlphaTON is essentially TON-on-TON-on-TON.
Keeping It All AI Rosy
Crypto, alongside the emergence of AI, is clearly looking for companies that can generate revenue. DATs, as public entities, have to make money to survive, which is why many of them are diversifying holdings into other business lines – like AlphaTON’s move with AI.
The boom in AI, and “agents” that can do tasks for people while taking a cryptocurrency like TON is enticing to some investors who look past currency market doldrums and towards a rosier future.
“I think that’s a huge opportunity, and I definitely see that there are a lot of third-party app developers on Telegram that are building new DeFi products, where AI agents are either making or executing financial transactions for you within the app,” Kaiser added.
And Scaramucci also thinks he can help with this diversification.
“Hopefully, there’s a few investments here that will probably end up in the AlphaTON vehicle that we’ll be responsible for,” he told BeInCrypto.
It’s all cyclical to many investors who have a longer-term view than most. Scaramucci sees AlphaTON as a diverse investor in the Telegram and TON ecosystem that can eventually get back to TON’s 2024 glory days.
“My feeling is that we’ll start with a plan and then over the next 24 to 36 months, we’ll have a fairly robust company with a great net operating income and lots of growth,” Scaramucci added.
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