Pantera Capital invests in The Open Network (TON)

The Open Network (TON) "fever" has not yet "cooled" as it continues to receive the latest capital injection from veteran crypto venture capital fund Pantera Capital.

Pantera Capital's undisclosed amount of capital into The Open Network

According to sources from TheBlock, veteran crypto venture capital fund Pantera Capital, which manages more than $5 billion in assets, has invested an undisclosed amount of capital in The Open Network (TON) blockchain.

Speaking about the latest investment, Pantera Capital representatives believe that with a whopping 900 million users and over 1 trillion views on Telegram's monthly channels, TON has the potential to bring mass adoption to newcomers to the crypto market.

“We believe the TON network is still in its early stages and we are excited to see the adoption of the ecosystem and its new features by Telegram users.”

🤯💎

— TON 💎 (@ton_blockchain) May 2, 2024

The Open Network is a Layer-1 blockchain network, originally designed by the Telegram messaging application development team called Telegram Open Network in 2018. However, the project has faced many problems. Legal trouble from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the period 2019 - 2020 with accusations that the company's previous initial offering (ICO) that raised $1.7 billion USD violated securities laws .

To resolve the situation, Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov was forced to declare a relinquishment of ownership, hand over the project to two developers, Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelyanenko, and then rebrand to The Open Network and open source code for the community to continue operating. Since then, the project has made great strides in the following years.

Pantera Capital's latest capital injection agreement into The Open Network takes place when this Layer-1 blockchain has recently been the focus of attention, becoming a vibrant Web3 ecosystem with many attractive activities such as sharing shares half of the revenue with channel owners, allows users to pay for advertising in TON, cooperates with Oyster Labs to launch the Universal Basic Smartphone (UBS), and "joins hands" with HashKey Group to expand services to the region Asia Pacific.

Recently, Telegram also successfully integrated USDT stablecoin payment onto the TON blockchain. Telegram is even considering an initial public offering (IPO). However, the founder of Telegram confirmed in his latest interview that he has no plans to IPO like previously spread information, and at the same time "flexed his wealth" by "having several hundred million dollars in his account". bank, and has owned Bitcoin for the past 10 years."

TON price reacted positively by nearly 8% immediately after the news, currently trading around 5 USD at the time of writing.

1H chart of the TON/USDT trading pair on OKX exchange at 10:40 PM on May 2, 2024

Pantera Capital "accelerates" investment activities

Pantera Capital's investment in TON takes place in the context that this venture capital company is also completing the final KYC procedures in the purchase of the second batch of locked Solana (SOL) tokens at a price of around 100 USD / SOL. , sold by the bankruptcy administrators of the FTX exchange as an auction.

In addition, Pantera is also in the process of negotiating to raise an additional $1 billion for a new $1.25 billion cryptocurrency fund to invest in early-stage startups, early-stage tokens, liquidity tokens, and more. other assets under the name "Pantera Fund V".

The new fund has a minimum investment of USD 1 million for qualified investors to participate, and the first capital contribution is expected to take place on April 1, 2025. According to the document, limited partners will need to contribute at least $25 million to the fund.

If successful, this will be the largest fund since the series of scandals and bankruptcies of the crypto industry in 2022. Previously in September 2022, Pantera achieved its capital raising target of 1.25 billion USD for its second blockchain fund. two. However, Pantera Fund V will be completely separate from this $1.25 billion fund.