Gram, the coin that was Toncoin until 15 June, trades around $1.10, its lowest print of 2026 and about 87% below the $8.24 high of June 202456. This is the year Telegram stopped pretending to be at arm's length: it replaced the TON Foundation as the network's steward in May, became its largest validator, renamed the token in June and shipped a self-custodial wallet to its billion users in October115. Every one of those events moved the price. Every one of those moves has been fully given back. The question we set in September was whether Telegram's ownership changes the investment case. Our answer: it changes who holds the coin, not who uses it, and in February the market finds out how many coins there really are.
A note on timing: this piece was announced in our September research calendar for 1 September and is published today, two months late. The analysis is as of 6 November 2026. We do not backdate.
Where we are now
First, the rename, because it confuses tickers and nothing else. On 1 June 2026 Pavel Durov proposed returning TON's native coin to the name in the original 2018 white paper; the on-chain vote closed on 8 June with 81.2% in favour, and the change took effect at 12:00 UTC on 15 June12. It is a one-to-one rename: same coin, same chain, no migration, no new contract. Bybit replaced its TON pairs with GRAM on 22 June and Binance on 2 July43. Anything that asks you to "claim" or "migrate" is a scam, and the network said so itself.
Now the price. Gram opened 2026 at $1.66, spiked to $2.72 on 8 May on the news that Telegram was taking over the network, and has fallen 60% since to today's $1.106. The rename week added nothing; the Money wallet rollout on 9 October produced a 9% jump to $1.56 that lasted a few days14. Market cap is $3.1 billion on 2.85 billion circulating coins; fully diluted it is $5.8 billion, because roughly 2.4 billion more coins exist but are locked or frozen5. Annual inflation runs at 2.6% and the fee burn is immaterial: validators are paid about 95 million coins a year, the chain burns around 1,300 a day89.
And the usage, which is the heart of the matter. Daily transactions have more than doubled this year, from 2.2 million in May to 5.0 million today, and 282,000 wallets were active in the last 24 hours89. Monthly active wallets are about 2.2 million16. Telegram has more than a billion monthly users. Two tenths of one percent of them touch the chain in a month. Total value locked in TON DeFi is $42.9 million, down from $92 million at the May peak and from $778 million at the July 2024 high; daily DEX volume is about $2.7 million716. For a $3 billion coin, that is a rounding error.
The bull case
1. The distribution problem is solved
No other chain has a single application with a billion users as its owner, operator and default wallet. Mini Apps have been exclusive to TON since January 2025; channel owners are paid their ad revenue in Gram; Stars convert to Gram; and since 9 October the non-custodial Money wallet is being rolled out inside the app itself, with the custodial Walt wallet alongside it1415. Transactions doubling in six months is what the beginning of that looks like. Telegram also has a direct financial reason to make the coin work: about $300 million of its first-half 2025 revenue came from TON exclusivity agreements18.
2. The float is small and under-staked
Only about 12% of supply is staked, against 30% to 60% on comparable networks, and Telegram itself has started staking as the largest validator89. If the wallet rollout pushes retail staking toward peer levels, that is hundreds of millions of coins leaving the market. Two European staking ETPs already exist, renamed to Gram in June3. TON Strategy, the Nasdaq-listed treasury vehicle, holds 230 million coins, almost all staked, and has not sold12.
3. The frozen coins may be dead
The 1.08 billion coins due to unfreeze on 21 February 2027 were frozen in February 2023 precisely because they had sat untouched in 171 early-miner wallets for years11. Keys that did not move between 2020 and 2023 may well not exist. If they are lost, the largest overhang in the bear case is a ghost, and the market is discounting supply that will never sell.
The bear case
Now the argument against. We find it the stronger one, and the bull case's own numbers are why.
Demand is a balance sheet, not a user base. The buyers of 2025–26 were Telegram, which sold more than $450 million of Toncoin in the first half of 2025 while writing it down on its own books, and TON Strategy, which raised $558 million to buy coins and now trades at a 44% discount to the value of what it holds, with its largest shareholder demanding buybacks rather than more coins1812. The other treasury vehicle, AlphaTON, wound itself up in July and returned the cash. A coin whose marginal buyer is its own promoter and a discounted holding company has a demand problem that a wallet launch does not fix.
Every catalyst retraced, which means the market has stopped believing the next one. Catchain 2.0 in April, the fee cut, the Telegram takeover in May (+34% in a day), the rename in June, the wallet in October: each produced a spike that was fully unwound within weeks61514. Over the same period TVL halved and active wallets stayed at a fraction of a percent of Telegram's audience. Transactions doubling with TVL halving is not adoption; it is cheaper transactions after the fee cut, counted more often.
The supply calendar is the event. The Believers Fund releases about 46 million coins a month: 45.6 million on 26 November, 45.4 million on 26 December, 46.4 million on 26 January10. Then on 21 February 2027 the 48-month freeze on 1.08 billion early-miner coins expires, 38% of today's circulating supply, which CoinShares calls the single largest discrete event in the asset's calendar911. The bull case says those keys are lost. Perhaps. But nobody knows, the freeze was imposed by a vote rather than by proof of loss, and a market that cannot tell cannot price it as zero. It will price it before the date, against $43 million of on-chain liquidity. Even the monthly unlocks alone are roughly twenty times the chain's daily DEX volume.
One company, one founder, one point of failure. Telegram is now steward, largest validator and author of the governance proposals; the network's independence has been replaced by a corporate roadmap that discloses its steps one at a time. The founder faces twelve charges in France, was questioned for a fourth time in July, and was designated a terrorist by Russia on 30 July13. When India, Telegram's largest market, blocked the app for a week in June, the coin fell 10% in a day17. CoinShares put it plainly: this is a Telegram investment case, and Telegram is a private company with its IPO on hold pending a criminal case.
Telegram's takeover changed who holds Gram, not who uses it. The demand is corporate and discounted, the usage is a rounding error against the audience, and the next four months bring 137 million coins of scheduled supply followed by the largest release in the chain's history. The market will not wait for 21 February to decide what that means.
Our view: Gram trades at $0.80 by the end of Q1 2027, five weeks past the unfreeze. That is roughly 27% below today and above the October 2025 flash-crash wick. Conviction is moderate — about 60% — and we say why: a billion-user distribution channel is the one thing in crypto that can make usage numbers go vertical, and the staked share is low enough that a staking wave could absorb the unlocks.
Our bet runs one way: down, into the unfreeze. We are not calling TON dead, and we are not betting against Telegram's ability to ship. If Gram closes a week above $1.60 first, we were wrong — see below.
What would prove us wrong
One direction, one closing level, and the usage numbers that would hollow the thesis out before the price does.
$1.60 is above every weekly close since July 2026 and above the September and October spike highs on a closing basis. A week ending there says the market has absorbed the unlock calendar and bought the wallet story, and the thesis is closed against us, whatever happens afterwards.
Any of these weakens the thesis while the price holds, and we will log it as it happens: TON DeFi TVL back above $150 million; monthly active wallets above 5 million; or the staked share of supply above 20%. Each one would mean the wallet is converting users into holders, which is the thing we say is not happening.
Gram trading at $0.80 on major spot venues by 31 March 2027. If neither the target nor the invalidation resolves by then, the thesis is booked as it stands — unresolved and closed. It does not get extended.
When a condition triggers, we book the result and publish the piece. As always.
This is analysis, not investment advice. Do your own research. The thesis is not changed after the fact.