On August 9, 2023, a press release announced TON Space, a wallet built into the Telegram messaging app1. Wallet, a TON-based app inside Telegram, sent it out through Chainwire. Telegram reached 800 million people every month, the release said. The contact line at the bottom read: Ryan Dennis, TON Foundation. On September 13, 2023, The Straits Times called him the foundation's head of brand2.
Ryan Elliott Dennis, the subject of this piece, is CryptoLately's editor, and he asked The CryptoLately.com Desk to report on his work. The CryptoLately.com Desk reported it from public records.
On October 13, 2026, The CryptoLately.com Desk asked Dennis about his holdings. "I do not hold Toncoin," he said. Toncoin is the TON blockchain's native token14. Asked about Notcoin the same day, he said: "I don't hold any Notcoin."
In 2019, four years before that release, the SEC stopped Telegram's own token sale. That record comes first.
The sale the SEC stopped
On October 11, 2019, the SEC filed an emergency action against Telegram Group Inc. and its subsidiary, TON Issuer Inc.7. By the agency's count, the two had raised more than $1.7 billion. Telegram sold about 2.9 billion tokens called Grams to 171 initial purchasers, the SEC said.
“Our emergency action today is intended to prevent Telegram from flooding the U.S. markets with digital tokens that we allege were unlawfully sold,” said Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement7.
Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled on March 24, 2020, and his opinion counted 175 purchasers9. The court barred delivery of the Grams8. His opinion also set out a test. “In the abstract, an investment of money in a cryptocurrency utilized by members of a decentralized community connected via blockchain technology, which itself is administered by this community of users rather than by a common enterprise, is not likely to be deemed a security under the familiar test laid out in S.E.C. v. W.J. Howey Co.,” he wrote.
Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, announced the end of Telegram's active involvement with TON on May 12, 202011. “While networks based on the technology we built for TON may appear, we won’t have any affiliation with them and are unlikely to ever support them in any way,” Durov wrote.
The court approved settlements on June 26, 20208. Telegram agreed to return more than $1.2 billion to investors and pay an $18.5 million civil penalty. For three years from June 26, 2020, the final judgment says, Telegram owed the SEC "forty-five (45) days’ notice" before taking part in issuing any digital asset10.
Both sides, in their own words
Can the people who told its story claim a share of TON's return?
“Almost everybody who works in crypto, for example, has a Telegram account, so it is a platform that is ready for a Web3 experience, and this will be the first of its kind at this size and level for a consumer messaging platform the size of Telegram”
“The ‘boosters’ are advertised by scammers as tools that somehow allow users to earn on their coins”
What grew from the code
Open-source developers kept the network going. CNBC described TON in April 2024 as “initially developed by Telegram, but has since been taken over by open-source developers”6.
A foundation took shape in Switzerland. Zug's commercial register lists The Open Network Stiftung, also called The Open Network Foundation12. Its founding deed is dated April 11, 2023, and the entry was published on May 8, 2023. Seo Ro Yun chaired its first council of three, which included Manuel Stotz. Its stated aims include promoting the TON blockchain to the public. Another is funding the integration of TON apps into other networks, such as social networks, in The CryptoLately.com Desk's translation from the German.
On September 6, 2023, the TON Foundation announced "its official launch as a Swiss non-profit organization"13.
Two dates sit side by side. The judgment's notice term ran three years from June 26, 202010. TON Space opened to Telegram users on September 13, 20232.
What he said for TON
Four dated pages carry his words, and his title changes from page to page. His goal appears in The Straits Times story on the Token2049 launch2. The aim, he said, was to onboard 30 per cent of Telegram users by 2028, "which is a huge win in terms of mass adoption".
On March 1, 2024, BeInCrypto ran a question-and-answer session with "the Director of Brand at the TON Foundation"4. The page carries BeInCrypto's "Advertorial" byline, which the site uses for "sponsored content provided by BeInCrypto partners". Asked about privacy, he set the foundation apart from Telegram. “As part of TON Foundation, I can’t speak specifically about Telegram, we are just partners and not the same company,” he said.
He also talked up Notcoin, a tapping game that runs inside Telegram. “I’m not being hyperbolic when I say Notcoin is likely to become the biggest Web2-to-Web3 onboarding event in crypto history once the hotly anticipated token distribution takes place,” Dennis said4. In the same session, his 2028 target became a head count, where The Straits Times had reported a share of Telegram users. Speaking of Wallet, he said the mission was "to give this power to 500 million people by 2028".
On May 16, 2024, crypto.news covered Notcoin's token airdrop, drawing on a press release5. Its story ran a line from "Ryan Dennis, brand director at TON Foundation". “More than just the fastest-growing, most popular game in blockchain history, Notcoin has now become a cultural phenomenon creating one of the largest, most engaged communities in Web3,” the quote reads.
Then, on July 19, 2024, BeInCrypto called him "the Head of Communications for TON Foundation" in a story Bitget carries14. That July story is the latest dated page found for this piece that names him in a TON Foundation role.
Telegram and TON, date by date
Telegram's ties to TON grew in dated steps. TON Space went live on September 13, 20232. The Straits Times reported that in November it would become the default for Telegram users outside the United States.
On April 19, 2024, Tether launched its USDT stablecoin on TON15. A stablecoin is a token pegged to a currency such as the dollar6. CNBC reported on April 19, 2024, that Telegram users could send USDT over TON.
Dennis told The CryptoLately.com Desk on October 13, 2026, that he pitched that story to CNBC directly. CNBC's article credits Telegram with the news6. The TON Foundation and Dennis go unmentioned in its text.
By May 16, 2024, Tether said more than $200 million in USDT had been issued on TON16. On January 21, 2025, Telegram and the TON Foundation went further, Decrypt reported17. Crypto features in Telegram's mini apps, the small apps that run inside the messenger, would have to use TON. “Existing wallet protocols to non-TON chains will be prohibited except for the specific purpose of allowing users to bridge assets from other blockchains,” Stotz told Decrypt, which called him the foundation's president.
What the numbers did
TON's on-chain activity began its climb while Dennis spoke for the foundation. TON Stat counts active wallets, meaning wallets that sent at least one transaction in a rolling 30-day window18. On August 31, 2023, that count stood at 64,330. By July 31, 2024, it read 3,740,731. That is about 58 times higher, by The CryptoLately.com Desk's arithmetic.
The month-end high came on September 30, 2024, at 16,688,42818. TON Stat's highest daily reading is 17,121,443, on October 3, 2024. By December 31, 2024, the count stood at 6,435,776.
Active TON wallets rose from 64,330 on Aug. 31, 2023 to 3,740,731 on July 31, 2024
Wallets that sent a transaction in the 30 days to each month's end, per TON Stat
- First and last dated Dennis pages
- Other month ends
- Height: Active wallets, 30-day count
Source: TON Stat [18].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Jan 2023 | 82,778 |
| Feb 2023 | 80,045 |
| Mar 2023 | 77,405 |
| Apr 2023 | 68,585 |
| May 2023 | 62,873 |
| Jun 2023 | 62,762 |
| Jul 2023 | 68,122 |
| Aug 2023 | 64,330 |
| Sep 2023 | 108,533 |
| Oct 2023 | 98,833 |
| Nov 2023 | 121,459 |
| Dec 2023 | 220,862 |
| Jan 2024 | 345,077 |
| Feb 2024 | 394,358 |
| Mar 2024 | 1,477,485 |
| Apr 2024 | 1,605,579 |
| May 2024 | 3,904,418 |
| Jun 2024 | 4,450,574 |
| Jul 2024 | 3,740,731 |
| Aug 2024 | 6,382,238 |
| Sep 2024 | 16,688,428 |
| Oct 2024 | 10,289,675 |
| Nov 2024 | 7,571,270 |
| Dec 2024 | 6,435,776 |
USDT followed the Tether launch. DefiLlama's series for USDT on TON starts on June 4, 2024, at $386,275,10119. On July 19, 2024, it read $619,674,502. Its high, $1,418,588,196, first appears on November 29, 2024.
These counts rose in the months Dennis spoke for TON. Notcoin, Tether and Telegram launched products in those same months. The sources opened for this piece credit those teams with their launches.
The case for his work
Dennis makes a larger claim. He told The CryptoLately.com Desk on October 13, 2026, that he took the TON Foundation from relative obscurity. In his account, he wove its relationship with Telegram back together. The story he told, of building the web3 ecosystem inside Telegram, won trust from authorities and buy-in from audiences, he said. In the pages The CryptoLately.com Desk opened, outlets quote him under his titles and credit Telegram, Tether and app teams with the launches.
His words at the 2023 launch made the same case in smaller form. “Almost everybody who works in crypto, for example, has a Telegram account, so it is a platform that is ready for a Web3 experience, and this will be the first of its kind at this size and level for a consumer messaging platform the size of Telegram,” Dennis told The Straits Times2.
Testing the obscurity claim
GDELT, a project that counts news articles worldwide, offers one test20. Its tally of articles naming the "TON Foundation" was 124 for the 12 months before August 2023. Of those, 53 ran in the first quarter of 2023, before any dated page found for this piece names Dennis. That one quarter came close to the series' later high of 60. From August 2023 through July 2024, it counted 166. The next 12 months, all after July 19, 2024, brought 139. Its record skips one day in March 2023 and 17 days in June and July 2025.
Its pool of monitored articles shrank in April 202320. The daily average fell from 246,175 in March to 162,832, by The CryptoLately.com Desk's arithmetic. Per million monitored articles, "TON Foundation" coverage rose from 1.48 to 2.80, by the same arithmetic.
Articles naming both Telegram and Toncoin moved more. GDELT counted 119 in the 12 months before August 2023 and 241 from August 2023 through July 202421. From August 2024 through July 2025, all after July 19, 2024, it counted 331. Both series peaked in the third quarter of 2024, at 60 and 19820. July 19, 2024 falls early in that quarter. By The CryptoLately.com Desk's count, 47 of the 60 and 185 of the 198 ran after that date. Every later quarter in the chart falls after it too.
TON Foundation news peaked at 60 articles in Q3 2024; Telegram and Toncoin news at 198
Articles per quarter in GDELT's worldwide news index, 2022 to 2025, for two searches, counts
- TON Foundation
- Telegram and Toncoin
- Height: Articles in GDELT's index
Sources: GDELT Project [20]; GDELT Project [21].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | TON Foundation | Telegram and Toncoin |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 Q1 | 11 | 15 |
| 2022 Q2 | 31 | 34 |
| 2022 Q3 | 27 | 33 |
| 2022 Q4 | 47 | 76 |
| 2023 Q1 | 53 | 17 |
| 2023 Q2 | 11 | 8 |
| 2023 Q3 | 38 | 44 |
| 2023 Q4 | 40 | 35 |
| 2024 Q1 | 22 | 38 |
| 2024 Q2 | 52 | 109 |
| 2024 Q3 | 60 | 198 |
| 2024 Q4 | 37 | 85 |
| 2025 Q1 | 24 | 30 |
| 2025 Q2 | 13 | 16 |
| 2025 Q3 | 34 | 48 |
| 2025 Q4 | 17 | 27 |
The case against
SEC officials framed the tie between Telegram and TON in 2020. “This settlement requires Telegram to return funds to investors, imposes a significant penalty, and requires Telegram to give notice of future digital offerings,” said Kristina Littman, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division's Cyber Unit8.
Scammers worked the same audience. On April 22, 2024, Kaspersky described a Toncoin pyramid scheme aimed at Telegram users, active since "at least November 2023"22. “The ‘boosters’ are advertised by scammers as tools that somehow allow users to earn on their coins,” said Olga Svistunova, senior web content analyst at Kaspersky, in Infosecurity Magazine23.
Kaspersky's write-up names the bot Dennis promoted. “This scam uses a confusing sequence of instructions, making it easy to overlook the suspicious transfer of money from the official @wallet bot to a third-party one,” it wrote22. In March 2024, Dennis gave BeInCrypto's readers his reason to use that bot. “The first reason you should start using @Wallet is because it is the only wallet in crypto that is as easy as texting,” he said4.
What to watch
Each side needs a different fact. Dennis's case gains from a named outlet or official who credits his work, on the record. The case against his account gains if scam reports keep pace with wallet growth. TON Stat's 30-day count read 2,913,152 on October 12, 2026, about a sixth of its October 2024 peak by The CryptoLately.com Desk's arithmetic18.
Sources
- Wallet, "Introducing TON Space – Self-Custody Wallet in Telegram, Available to Developers Now," Finbold (Chainwire release), Aug. 9, 2023, https://finbold.com/introducing-ton-space-self-custody-wallet-in-telegram-available-to-developers-now/
- Claire Huang, "Telegram launches Web3 wallet built on TON blockchain," The Straits Times, Sept. 13, 2023, Internet Archive capture of Sept. 14, 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20230914024148/https://www.straitstimes.com/business/telegram-and-swiss-incorporated-entity-launch-web3-wallet
- Claire Huang, "Telegram launches Web3 wallet built on TON blockchain," The Straits Times, updated Nov. 14, 2024, https://www.straitstimes.com/business/telegram-and-swiss-incorporated-entity-launch-web3-wallet
- Advertorial, "TON Foundation X AMA Session With BeInCrypto," BeInCrypto, March 1, 2024, Internet Archive capture of March 3, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20240303062851/https://beincrypto.com/ton-foundation-ama-session-with-beincrypto/
- Denis Omelchenko, "Telegram-based play-to-earn Notcoin airdrop storms social media," crypto.news, May 16, 2024, https://crypto.news/telegram-based-play-to-earn-notcoin-airdrop-storms-social-media/
- Ryan Browne, "Messaging app Telegram to allow Tether stablecoin payments," CNBC, April 19, 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/19/messaging-app-telegram-to-allow-tether-stablecoin-payments.html
- SEC, "SEC Halts Alleged $1.7 Billion Unregistered Digital Token Offering," SEC, Oct. 11, 2019, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-212
- SEC, "Telegram to Return $1.2 Billion to Investors and Pay $18.5 Million Penalty to Settle SEC Charges," SEC, June 26, 2020, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-146
- P. Kevin Castel, "Opinion and Order, SEC v. Telegram Group Inc., 19-cv-9439 (PKC), Document 227," CourtListener (U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.), March 24, 2020, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.524448/gov.uscourts.nysd.524448.227.0.pdf
- P. Kevin Castel, "Final Judgment, SEC v. Telegram Group Inc., 19-cv-9439 (PKC), Document 242," CourtListener (U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.), June 26, 2020, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.524448/gov.uscourts.nysd.524448.242.0.pdf
- Pavel Durov, "What Was TON And Why It Is Over," Telegraph, May 12, 2020, https://telegra.ph/What-Was-TON-And-Why-It-Is-Over-05-12
- Commercial Register of the Canton of Zug, "The Open Network Stiftung, CHE-418.000.792, commercial register entry and SHAB publications," Zefix (Swiss Central Business Name Index), entry published May 8, 2023, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://www.zefix.ch/ZefixREST/api/v1/firm/1586287.json
- TON Foundation, "TON Foundation Founded in Switzerland as a Non-Profit Organization," Chainwire, Sept. 6, 2023, https://chainwire.org/2023/09/06/ton-foundation-founded-in-switzerland-as-a-non-profit-organization/
- BeInCrypto, "Bitcoin Transfers Simplified: TON Foundation Introduces Teleport BTC Bridge," BeInCrypto (via Bitget News), July 19, 2024, https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560604106752
- Tether, "Tether Tokens (USD₮ and XAU₮) Launch on The Open Network (TON)," Tether, April 19, 2024, https://tether.io/news/tether-tokens-usdt-and-xaut-launch-on-the-open-network-ton/
- Tether, "Tether Collaborates with TON Foundation and Oobit To Create Seamless Crypto-Payment Solution," Tether, May 16, 2024, https://tether.io/news/tether-collaborates-with-ton-foundation-and-oobit-to-create-seamless-crypto-payment-solution/
- Andrew Hayward, "Telegram Goes Exclusive With TON, Barring Other Networks From Apps and Games," Decrypt, Jan. 21, 2025, https://decrypt.co/302023/telegram-exclusive-ton-barring-other-networks
- TON Stat, "TON Stat: Active Wallets (monthly)," TON Stat, daily readings from Nov. 15, 2019 to Oct. 12, 2026, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://www.tonstat.com/
- DefiLlama, "DefiLlama stablecoins API, Tether (USDT) chain balances, TON," DefiLlama, daily readings from June 4, 2024 to Oct. 13, 2026, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://stablecoins.llama.fi/stablecoin/1
- GDELT Project, "GDELT DOC 2.0 API, article count timeline, query "TON Foundation", 2022 to 2025," GDELT Project, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/doc/doc?query=%22TON%20Foundation%22&mode=timelinevolraw&format=json&startdatetime=20220101000000&enddatetime=20251231235959
- GDELT Project, "GDELT DOC 2.0 API, article count timeline, query telegram toncoin, 2022 to 2025," GDELT Project, read Oct. 13, 2026, https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/doc/doc?query=telegram%20toncoin&mode=timelinevolraw&format=json&startdatetime=20220101000000&enddatetime=20251231235959
- Kaspersky, "“Buy Toncoin and invite your friends”: how scammers promise big earnings with cryptocurrency," Kaspersky, April 22, 2024, https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/toncoin-cryptocurrency-scam/51042/
- Alessandro Mascellino, "Fraudsters Exploit Telegram’s Popularity For Toncoin Scam," Infosecurity Magazine, April 22, 2024, https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/telegram-exploited-toncoin-scam/