Telegram Messenger App Launches USDT Transfer Feature in Chats, Expands Crypto Services – Crypto Adoption on the Rise?
Telegram users can now transfer the world’s most popular stablecoin, Tether (USDT), through chats.
The news was tweeted by TON blockchain, with the team writing: “Imagine being able to buy and sell crypto through a messaging app. Now imagine it’s already here,” adds the link to the wallet.
Kirill Malev, a partner at First Stage Lab, a venture capital firm and ecosystem builder on the TON blockchain, recently shared exciting news for the TON community via Twitter.
He announced that the popular instant messaging app, Telegram, has integrated USDT into its @wallet bot, allowing users to send stablecoin to friends along with the native TON coin.
This new feature offers greater convenience and accessibility for TON users, and highlights the platform’s ongoing commitment to expanding its crypto capabilities.
This means users can now select the USDT altcoin in their Telegram chat boxes to transfer money to their peers directly and instantly.
Per Decrypto, however, Telegram will currently only support the USDT run on Throne blockchain, TRC20.
t.me/wallet also allows users to convert USDT TRC-20 tokens to purchase TON, Malev added.
This latest development should theoretically be positive for the industry. Malev claimed that
“This is a huge step forward for crypto adoption! […] This is not only an important milestone for the TON blockchain community, but also a significant step in bridging the gap between cryptocurrency and mainstream users. Now we can all easily *show* how crypto works to our non-cryptonative frens.”
He also mentioned some opportunities created by this Telegram/USDT move, including new and different types of transactions, shopping and crowdfunding.
Telegram is said to have 700 million monthly active users, per Demand Sage, with estimates of over one billion users by the end of the year. The number of users has increased by 175% since 2018. Furthermore, the app has 55.2 million daily active users as of 2023.
Meanwhile, USDT is the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization ($78 billion), and the third among all cryptocurrencies, behind bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH), respectively.
Although initially dismissive of the network, Pavel Durov, the mastermind behind Telegram, last year praised the efforts of TON – a blockchain project built from the ruins of his own vision of a global stablecoin.
Durov’s original TON was killed at the eleventh hour by US regulators back in 2020. It no longer stands for ‘Telegram Open Network’ as it was renamed by the breakaway developers and community – known as TON Foundation – who have reused the project and called it ‘The open network’. Instead of the original gram coin, this new TON project uses toncoin.
Durov also suggested that Telegram may one day launch a blockchain technology-powered marketplace for usernames, emojis and other app-based assets. Such a marketplace would ensure ownership of usernames was “secured on the blockchain” via “non-fungible token (NFT)-like smart contracts,” he claimed.
Without committing to anything, Durov suggested that TON and its native toncoin may be the best choice of network and currency for such a marketplace.
In October 2022, TON developers announced the launch of a peer-to-peer (P2P) market, allowing Telegram users to trade toncoin directly on the messaging platform. Users have been enabled to buy and sell crypto directly from and to each other with the wallet service as a guarantor of the transaction, they said.
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Learn more:
– Abandoned TON Crypto project may come to Telegram after all, in a different form
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– Telegram forced to make money – and the US SEC may be to blame
– Exclusive Interview: Tether Co-Founder Says Crypto Industry Will Bounce Back Despite Past Failures – Here’s Why
– Best Crypto Social Trading Platforms (2023)
– How to buy TRON (TRX)?
