Telegram announced that its users will be able to send and receive payments in real-time using the Toncoin cryptocurrency.
Toncoins can be purchased with a debit card, on cryptocurrency exchanges, or transferred from other digital wallets, according to the company.
Telegram users now transfer TON currencies “directly within Telegram chats without transaction fees to any Telegram user” using a new digital wallet, the firm announced on Twitter. “You won’t have to type in long wallet addresses or wait for confirmations with this service.”
Twitter has recently increased its use of cryptocurrency, which began in September when then-CEO Jack Dorsey provided bitcoin tipping options.
Toncoin is a long-awaited addition to Telegram.
Telegram’s TON blockchain project was unveiled in January 2018, was terminated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in July 2020, and was resurrected by a community of developers who believed in the idea in August of that year.
Telegram Open Network, or TON, was the name of the blockchain until May 202, when it was announced by Pavel Durov, the messaging service’s CEO, at the height of the “Crypto Winter” market crash. Despite this, it quickly garnered $1.7 billion from investors in what it claimed was not an initial coin offering (ICO) of the type that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had just begun to crack down on. That’s because the SEC pre-sold billions of what was then known as gram tokens to “accredited investors,” or affluent or institutional investors, under a part of the Securities Act that makes it far easier than a typical public offering.
After much litigation, Telegram agreed to pay a $18.5 million fine and return the remaining $1.2 billion to investors after the Securities and Exchange Commission said the grams sale was a pre-sale of securities and that selling them to the public would be prohibited.
Read more on Tech Gist Africa:
The Central African Republic has approved bitcoin as one of its official currencies
Meta’s WhatsApp has launched a cryptocurrency payments pilot in the United States
Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets will be banned as payment in Thailand starting in April
