The Power of over 1Bn Users - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

How's everyone doing? Let's give uh Andrew a round of applause. Probably the best MC in the game. He's uh he's given everyone a really great intro onto the stage. So, I just wanted to say that.

I'm I'm a big fan. Um today we are talking about Ton and Telegram. And just to to give you some context, I've been covering the cryptocurrency space since 2017. And over the past eight years, network effects have had a significant impact on the biggest protocols and platforms and how they grow. Uh the greater the network, the more chance that it is to succeed.

And you need to look no further than MA and Facebook's Libra project, which regulators cut down because they realize the threat of a payment system connected to a social media network with more than a billion users. Today, we have a very similar setup, right? We've got Telegram, we've got Ton, and we've got Max here and Hil to talk about that. Let's start there, Max. Let's talk about the power of a billion users.

Absolutely.

Um, basically like how many of you are using Telegram? Just show of hands.

Everyone not not quite not enough people. I think we need to we need to do better job in in the marketing. Basically, how many you know how many applications have a billion plus users out there? I mean, you know, if you look at the slides, it's basically there's five apps in the world who have a billion users. Telegram has a billion monthly active users.

Most of them are, you know, daily active and it's just a humongous gateway into web two and also into web 3 with our integration in the ton blockchain. Essentially um out of the you know billion monthly user half of them are active daily on the platform. Telegram is in essentially growing at a unprecedented scale and speed in in history. Essentially, we're at about a billion monthly active users, projected to be at around 1.5 billion monthly active users in about 3 years time.

And hopefully, we're going to grow even faster and even, you know, even stronger. Essentially, like what makes it so unique is that Telegram is open and it's permissionless and essentially is the launchpad to a lot of digital, you know, economies and digital creation. And that's where basically our tie-in with Ton comes in and what makes this unique partnership very, very special.

Yeah. As I mentioned at the beginning, I think one of the biggest takeaways is if you look at all those social media apps and these network effects, none of them have a blockchain integration, right? And Telegram billion users, it it is integrated with TON, you have this blockchain functionality that is a huge opportunity that most others are going to have to catch up with, right?

Yeah. Exactly. Like ultimately distribution is is everything in in you know whenever you want to sell sell something, when you want to reach your customers, your consumers, it's all about distribution, distribution, distribution. I think ton blockchain is the only blockchain out there, the only layer one which actually has a direct link with a messaging app which makes it very unique. So we have a web 3 you know platform to built on and we have a web 2 distribution channel.

So ultimately you know the builders, the consumers, the developers, everybody has a built-in access to worldwide distribution which makes it extremely unique.

Let's talk more about ton.

More about ton. No worries. Hang on. Sorry. basically uh you know ton is in an inflection point um it's number number 20 u cryptocurrency right now and I think we have huge growth potential compared to other ecosystems like salana like ethereum we have a lot of monthly active users as well but we're still lagging the monthly active users in the growth of telegram you know billion users on telegram about 140 million active users on ton so there's a huge gap and there's huge growth potential essentially which is uh you know it's the mission of the foundation to essentially you know make it accessible and easy to use for everybody to enable people to build on the blockchain and for consumers to abstract all the complexities away.

Essentially, like we just want to make crypto as easy as sending a text like no seed phrases, no complicated wallets, like almost zero knowledge use of of a mini app all within Telegram. So, you don't have to switch between apps, you don't have to go into different applications. It's all within Telegram essentially.

Yeah. Before we talk about some of those Telegram apps, Alil, I just want to bring you in here because 140 million active users is pretty big. And I think for me the the biggest impact is any of you people in the room that use Telegram that may have connected TON or or or have a a Telegram uh wallet wallet on Ton um have been onboarded to web 3 and that can't be understated. I mean 140 million people is a big deal. What do you what are your thoughts on that?

Do you think it's uh it's pretty significant that the the network effects of the app are already I mean 140 million is a lot of people.

I think the network effects are definitely already starting and it's also on a regional level. So there are some markets where the penetration is actually closer to 70 80 even 90%. And there we actually see a huge acceleration not only in the number of monthly active users but actually the activities that they do. So it's not just they open the app once it's actually their whole life starts to be based around Telegram. So for example in some markets um people do P2P transactions directly on Telegram.

They have even government services also on Telegram. So it's not just about number of users but how many times a day does someone actually open the app and use it?

Yeah Max let's talk a little bit about the actual market cap and then some of the some of the super apps that are that are you know many apps that are running in Telegram.

Like basically like you know market cap as you all know is about 7 billion right now. uh you know huge potential to go to Salana 16x Ethereum is 72x so I think you know we're just at the at the beginning of the journey to basically get get ton to to where it actually truly needs to be given the distribution we essentially have in terms of you know use cases I mean we see essentially you know three buckets we see consumers we see developers and we see businesses all three are important within the sort of super app ecosystem what we're trying to build within telegram like from a consumer point of view every Telegram account essentially comes with a built-in wallet. A lot of people don't even know that yet. Like if you go to add wallet, uh you basically will have a u a crypto wallet built in in your app. No seed phrase needed.

It's linked to your ID and it basically it's ready to use which makes it very powerful. So you can do peer-to-peer payments. Uh you can pay for you know applications. You can you know, you know, the idea is then to also pay for for everyday use or just you know send money to your friends essentially. So it's like you know using you know crypto is like as easy as sending a text.

That's sort of the the catchphrase which we're trying to instill in people because it is actually that easy and a lot of people just don't know about it.

And then within the ecosystem within the wallet essentially you have the whole ecosystem essentially you have DeFi you have stable coins. So you know essentially you can you know have savings in various different stable coins and we're also speaking to uh to most of the partners here and who also on stage earlier. Essentially you also have digital assets. So all of your collectibles, you can collect usernames. Uh you like you know every username on Telegram can be turned into NFT.

So you actually own the username which is quite unique. That started several years ago. Um you have stickers, you have games, uh you have trading bots like you have a whole ecosystem within just one application without ever having to leave it essentially.

Y

if I can stop you there just that the ability to stake stable coins natively on Telegram. It's, you know, for me it's a big selling point. And if if you just open any if you open WhatsApp and you had the ability for someone to send you USDT or USDC, what whatever your stable coin is of choice, I won't judge you. Um, you can stake them within a communication app. I mean, that's what Facebook wanted to do with Libra and everyone said no.

Sometimes you don't need to ask for permission, right?

Yeah. Of course, you don't have to ask permission. Also, the regulatory environment changed and if you see where where the world is going, it's going into sort of permissionless banking. Everybody wants to own your digital assets. You know, it's, you know, your keys, your crypto essentially.

Um, so having having the ability to make payments and keeping your funds with you without banks, without intermediaries is very powerful, especially also in, you know, in jurisdictions where there's underbanked, where people don't have access to the normal banking rails we have in the in the western world. So, it's a it's a very powerful tool um to basically use and deploy.

Let's talk about community and the creator economy. This is something we spoke about on stage with Faro and Yatsu yesterday. this uh the technology and the platform that could lead to the resurgence of NFTTS and also giving you the creator if you if you you know go and create some sticker packs or something like that on Telegram you end up getting the revenue from it like in

per exactly like there's a whole creator economy um and community within telegram a lot of people not aware of like you can create communities similar to discord similar to WhatsApp and other messaging apps where you can basically engage with your community so it's important for brands it's important for creators um to basically just engage with the community. You can engage also with them through stickers, through NFTTS and just have interact basically an interaction with them and you can monetize it which is very important like basically creators can monetize their content within telegram and that basically is also based on uh you know payouts are based on ton a lot of it is powered by the ton blockchain um you know you can you know there's features where you can pay to message your you know your your idols and your creators um so just you know makes a great community and a great platform essentially We got one more slide on on business use cases. So it's not all about the retail user on

all about retail. It's also about there's an ad platform. So there's there's there's ads in Telegram. So you can again reach your reach audiences. Uh we built a mini app platform.

Uh it's about 15,000 active mini apps right now within Telegram where people have you know it's all sorts of different things from shopping to uh to games uh to to debit and credit cards. Um like literally everybody right now is trying to build mini apps in telegram to basically capture this audience like this is like you know product market fit we have an audience let's build a mini app and we get out there essentially there's also a bot platform um it's like if I'm not mistaken about 5 million bots are on actively on telegram a lot of them are very famous trading bots especially in the memecoin area so a lot of it is all running actually on telegram there's a lot of OTC trading happening on telegram uh and it's just very easy to build because it is Unlike other platforms which are completely closed, Telegram is open. The APIs are public. So it makes it very easy for people to build on essentially.

Let's gauge the room. Does anyone use Bonkbot or anything like that? Any any trading bots natively in Telegram? There's a few DJs in the room. I love that.

I love that a lot. Um I I want to ask both of you, are there any favorite apps that that you guys love within Telegram? Many apps that you that you were involved in. I'm not gonna lie. I played a lot of hamster combat last year and I was very disappointed with how that ended.

I'm just gonna put that on the record. But yeah, some some favorites perhaps.

Basically, trading bots essentially just makes it super easy like once you get once you get a hang of it how it works because sometimes can be a bit clunky for for normal consumers. It is actually very powerful.

Hello.

Uh so in my opinion I think all apps on Tom should have a have a mini app and we've seen a lot of that happen this year. So Tom keeper the self-custodial wallet has their own mini app now. Stonfi the dex also has their own mini app. So as long it's important to make sure that we are Telegram ecosystem first and foremost and to reduce the barriers to entry that all of these apps actually have. So it's good to see DeFi actually moving over to making mini apps.

Uh but also I like some real world use cases. For example, there's an app called mobile which lets you buy eims directly in a mini app format.

Okay, beautiful. Um we're going to jump into digital asset treasuries. That always gets me. Um, does anyone own any stocks or shares in in a digital asset company? Um, Micro Strategy Strategy any holders?

Yeah. Bit mine maybe, you know, if you're an Ethereum maxi, yes, no, maybe. Okay. So, obviously the the digital asset treasury ma is is well and truly here. It really started obviously with micro Michael Sailor and strategy.

Um, it spilled over into the Ethereum space. Obviously, we've got a few Salana debts that have come up. billions and billions of dollars being piled into the underlying assets either Bitcoin, ETH, Salana and really a lot of interest in using these assets as the underlying um you know uh treasury reserve that these companies want to hold and uh the belief is really that the stock markets capital markets are unable to buy the underlying assets themselves. So these these companies act as a a sort of proxy that will give you indirect exposure to these assets. Ton is no different, right?

So there there is now Ton Strategy Co. which is a TON based um uh digital asset treasury. You want to tell us a little bit about this the the launch on the NASDAQ?

Yeah, of course. I mean for us it was a natural sort of extension. You know you have consumers, you have businesses, you have developers. Now you have institutions. So you know it for institutions to basically you know invest in in digital assets.

You sometimes need listed companies. Hence treasure vehicle. The largest one in Ton is called Ton Strategy Company. It raised $558 million. uh went live on NASDAQ in um in August.

It's one of the largest uh supporters of TON and one of the largest holders of TON. Uh now they're actually staking and everything is you know visible on the blockchain. So it's just another way to to you know get exposure essentially into another asset class which you couldn't do before like there's no ETFs yet. Some companies cannot buy crypto for you know various regulatory reasons. So digital asset treasury company was like the you know natural extension essentially.

Yeah. Just to highlight some of those stats. So, $558 million raised, 200 million ton tokens bought and 82% of the treasury has been staked and that that just started. So, I think that's pretty impressive. And I was chatting to Joe Luben from Consensus and obviously he's the the chairman um of uh one of the biggest Ethereum uh treasury companies and they were talking a lot about Bitcoin treasury companies versus you know these al alternative um digital asset treasuries and the ability to earn yield and stake those assets is a really big compelling use case for why this works.

So uh once again another a very good talking point for for Ton to

yeah it's super important to stake essentially it just creates more more revenue you can then restake and you just basically grow the treasure treasury and run a sustainable business which is you know different to some other assets. Beautiful. Hal, it's your turn. Let's talk about tokenized stocks and ETFs on Telegram.

Thank you, Gareth. Thank you, Max. And thank you everyone for attending today's uh vice chat/ keynote. So, my name is Halil. I'm the chief strategy officer of TOP and wallet in Telegram.

Top is a venture studio focusing on the Ton ecosystem. So what we try to do is invest and accelerate as many apps as possible to make sure that the future 1 billion users of ton actually have a lot of different apps that they can um use from from DeFi to payments to real world use cases. Uh today I want to talk about what is in our opinion uh the biggest and most exciting new asset class that's going to come to crypto and specifically our application of it because with the telegram wallet we have a very different type of audience to everyone else in crypto and we think we have a really unique opportunity here to create a huge value ad uh for our users and for ton with tokenized stocks and ETFs and stay tuned for an announcement on this now. So what are we looking at today? We have three and a half billion people in the world who are either unbanked or underbanked.

Uh this means that they don't have access to essential financial tools and are basically excluded from the financial world. Whilst um today this is the best way for someone to actually start generating wealth and the creation of a middle class in these developing countries. So the question is how do you actually buy Apple, Tesla or Tonx stock? In the case of Apple and Tesla, these are globally recognized brands. Um, everyone around the world knows about Apple and about its uh, innovative electronics.

Same with Tesla. These this is a complete icebreaker in the EV market. However, people outside of the US and some European markets probably cannot actually access this. In the last 15 years, access has improved a lot in developed markets, but in developing markets, it's either working through some sort of broker or you have no access at all. So you know these brands, you love these brands but there's no way for you to invest in them.

Uh whilst they have been responsible Apple and Tesla but also since 1950 stocks have been responsible for the growth of the US um middle class there's been I think approximately 10% annualized return on a yearly basis on the S&P 500 and even with inflation that's still 6 and a half%. So if you invest a bit of your savings every single month with your paycheck into uh into the stock market by the end of your working life you will have a very sizable amount of savings that you can then you can then spend. Uh but again this is not available or has not been available previously to basically anyone in the world. So um we're pleased to announce today that in partnership with uh Kraken the exchange and backed uh the tokenized securities platform that we are going to be offering tokenized stocks and ETF not just on the wallet but in the future by the end of the year on ton as well. Uh we chose Kraken and back because we believe these are the best partners in the ecosystem currently offering these stocks.

Kraken have an amazing um interface and technological let's say innovation that they've put into the space with 24-hour um workday uh trading. Uh backed have a really good system in terms of how to actually tokenize and that purchase these assets on stock exchanges and we believe this is the best partner possible for our uh product which is Xtos on the wallet. Um so why is the wallet important for tokenized stocks? So with our dual product with custody and non-custody, we are democratizing markets. This is not a product for just a user in France or Germany.

This is a this is a product for the entire world. So whether you're in Southeast Asia or Latin America, we enable access to basic financial tools that you need in order to generate wealth. And with XOXOs, um we make investment as easy as sending a message. So what you'll see soon actually as of today in the wallet are 60 different tokenized uh US equities and ETFs all the global recognizable brands Apple, Google, Tesla, uh Meta. So everything that you see on the NASDAQ and um New York Stock Exchange, you'll actually be able to now see in the wallet.

So if you are, let's say, for example, in Indonesia and you eat a McDonald's every day and buy Coke, you can now actually buy a share in these companies straight on the wallet. Uh we will also offer 24x5 markets which means that you'll be able to trade even outside of trading hours on work days with just the weekends being off. There will be instant settlement which means you get to own your share of the stock immediately and there'll be fractional ownership. So there is no there's not going to be a barrier to entry of I don't know Tesla $450. You have to buy at least one stock.

You can buy up even from one USDT you'll be able to buy Tesla. Uh and of course this is all integrated into the Telegram Messenger app. And as the first stock that we've tokenized is actually TONX. So TONX is now available uh directly on chain to be purchased by by you guys. So on the wallet we already have a proven product market fit and access to this developing market audience with over 140 million users who are now eager to use the product.

And we offer the easiest way to invest in crypto. We have a very simple onboarding through the Telegram menu. So it's embedded natively into the telegram application with both custodial and self-custodial asset management. On the custodial side, we do have a very easy way to on board. So if I was to send Gareth or Max one ton, they'll automatically get wallet whilst on the self custody side, this is for users who are slightly more advanced but want to do things on chain.

Um and we have easy fee on and off ramps on both sides uh powered by uh on the soft custodial side by moon which allow you to actually on-ramp your $100 US to 100 USDT without actually paying any fees. And this is a demo of our deep telegram integration. So on iOS you will see the wallet on the settings tab whilst on Android it's in the side sidebar menu on the side and you'll be able to actually gift these and send these stocks directly as a telegram message. So it will appear as Bob sent to um Bob sent $50 worth of Nvidia stock to some to one of the Telegram contacts. And this is what you'll be able to do.

And the most one of the most important things is XTO is coming to TON in Q4 which means that all of the stocks that are now available on the wallet will also be available on chain which offers you the opportunity to own these stocks as part of your inside of your self-custodial wallet and actually opens up a lot of different DeFi possibilities with um with stocks because before what you could do on a normal trading app is just hold it in your your app and actually first of all not you fully own it, but also it just sits there and you have to expect it to expect the stock price to go up and that's your only way of like generating wealth. Whilst in this case you can actually um use it all across DeFi. You'll be able to trade it on chain and importantly dividends will be automatically reinvested into the stock. So you'll automatically get more of the stock as dividends get paid out. So our mission is to educate, is to empower, is to include the whole world, but mostly the developing markets um into stocks and into the next generation of of wealth that's going to come to uh to the rest of the world.

Beautiful. Take the power into your hands, download Telegram, and get involved in all of this. Max Hil, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. Thank you.