🏆 Yesterday marked a historic milestone: for the first time, investors gained access to a TON-holding company listed on the US stock market (ticker: VERB). This company is deploying $558 million to accumulate Toncoin — never selling, only buying more over time.

↗️ VERB’s stock more than doubled on its first trading day, pushing its market cap above $1 billion and earning it unicorn status on day one. The investor list includes long-time TON supporters like Kingsway, Vy Capital, and Ribbit, alongside many new institutional backers.

🪙 TON (The Open Network) is an infinitely scalable blockchain that we helped develop years ago to meet the needs of Telegram’s hundreds of millions of users. Today, TON is the economic backbone of Telegram — much like a national currency powers a country’s economy.

🌎 On Telegram, everything runs on TON: from payouts to creators and app developers to ad payments, mini apps and collectibles like usernames, numbers, and gifts. As a result, TON is now the #2 blockchain by daily NFT trading volume, second only to Ethereum.

🧠 It’s no surprise that Verb Technology — to be rebranded as TON Strategy — has chosen TON as its primary treasury asset. It’s mirroring MicroStrategy’s bitcoin playbook, which let it grow from $1B to $100B+ in 5 years. The half a billion $ Verb is investing into TON is just the start.

- @Durov

📰 Durov's account (@monk) was actually deleted. The thing is that he once had a test number +999 linked to him, which at the moment can only be linked by Telegram employees. 📨 Durov did not notice that one of the five-digit codes was chosen correctly, where these codes come in large numbers all the time, and the prankster moved on to the password entry stage, after which he requested an account reset. 🗑 Perhaps the account was deleted in 2 minutes instead of 7 days due to the linked +999. The account was later restored.

🐶 After which, on Durov's old account, where "he had been online for a long time", the username @raven appeared, and on the new account the phone number was changed to anonymous. 🤷‍♂️ Will this make it better, considering that each linked number is leaked by ordinary users?

🔎 Telegram May Be Quietly Testing a Feed like Feature

Telegram has recently introduced a new ‘Posts’ tab in Search, allowing users to easily discover content from public channels. This update comes roughly a year after the launch of #hashtag search, signaling Telegram’s continued focus on improving content discoverability.

This appears to be a soft launch of a potential future ‘Feed’ feature — offering users a scrollable stream of relevant #posts, possibly influenced by engagement metrics such as stars.

If fully implemented, this feature could significantly boost post visibility for channels, increase ad exposure for advertisers, and enhance ad revenue opportunities for creators. All indications suggest that Telegram is gearing up to roll out a #feed-based content experience, a move that could reshape how users browse and interact on the platform.

#NFT upgrade avilable

🎁 ,🎁 ,🎁 ,🎁

📣 Following my post 20 days ago, users have sent us hundreds of reports about scams and blackmail. 👮‍♂️

⛔️ Based on these reports, this week we’re banning numerous channels for doxxing and extortion. 🔒

❌ A ban for this reason means we have undeniable evidence that a channel’s admins published defamatory posts, then deleted them in exchange for payment from victims. Some have even been caught selling so-called “protection blocks” — fees victims must pay to avoid being targeted. 💵

❌ Telegram is not a place for doxxing or blackmail. And to those running such channels: don’t waste your time creating clones — we’ll find you. 📡

📰 An upcoming feature in @BotFather - Threaded mode allows bots to see updates in monoforums, or more precisely, direct channels. This commit was discovered by user @yehudalev. This setting is currently not working.

It is expected that with their help you can create autoresponders, filter spam, automatically suggest your own version of a post or publish to a channel, and much more.

Thanks: 💌💌💌

🪙 Good week for TON. Verb, a NASDAQ-listed company that has chosen TON as its primary asset, has successfully raised $558 million to begin buying and stockpiling TON immediately.

Meanwhile, Coinbase Ventures has also started accumulating TON.

Exciting times ahead! 🚀

— @durov.

📰 WhatsApp and Telegram calls have been officially blocked in the Russian Federation! Roskomnadzor has confirmed this. ⚠️🇷🇺 It started on August 1, when calls via foreign messengers were blocked in test mode. ☎️ And on August 10, there was news that the four largest local telecom operators were calling for blocking call communications via messengers in order to adjust finances and return users to mobile calls and SMS to increase profits due to voice traffic. 👮‍♂️The official reason for blocking this method of communication is "the fight against fraudsters." The department reminds that in 2024, the "Antifraud" system will be operating in the country to prevent calls with number substitution.

📞 Symptoms of calls: calls are glitching, there is a high chance of connection breaks, video communications are of "jackal" quality, failures also affect video chats. Peer-2-peer do not help.

It is important to remember that the UAE (and Dubai) also block VoIP calls, and Telegram does not take measures to bypass them. It is not known whether Telegram will try to bypass call blocking in the Russian Federation. 🪂🇷🇺In order for calls to Telegram to work again, Telegram needs to "land", open a legal entity, build interaction with regulators and law enforcement agencies, as well as unquestioningly comply with all other Russian laws.

📰 The Telegram press service responded to the partial restriction of calls in the messenger within the territory of Russian Federation, stating that they are fighting against malicious use (including sabotage, violence, and fraud) and the fact that they were the first to add privacy settings to calls:

Moderators, using special AI tools, actively monitor public sections of the platform and handle complaints to remove millions of malicious messages daily.

So that every user can independently decide from whom to accept calls or completely disable them.

The press service did not express their opinion on blocking of calls within the country to journalists.

Source: 💌💌💌

📰 Due to frequent cases of theft of stars and gifts, Telegram disables the possibility of spending stars and transferring gifts - the channel @telelakel reports.

👨‍🏫 A month ago, my father — a leading expert in Ancient Roman literature — turned 80. I asked what advice I should pass to the next generation. He gave me 3:

👨‍💻 1. Lead by example. People — especially kids — follow what you do, not what you say. Watching my father work tirelessly on numerous books and scientific papers showed me and my brother the meaning of dedication and inspired us to work hard too.

💖 2. Focus on the positive. Growing up in post-war Leningrad, my father learned to control emotions to be a positive force for his family, colleagues and society. He taught me to frame thoughts in ways that bring the most good, even in hard times.

🫡 3. Prioritize conscience. Studying and translating thinkers from Julius Caesar to Seneca, my father saw that morals outlast talent. Moral compass, unlike intelligence or creativity, is the ultimate human quality that will not lose value even in the age of AI.

1️⃣2️⃣ As Telegram turns 12 today, I want it to keep following my father’s advice — and:

🏆 Lead by example, setting trends for the messaging world.

🚀 Be a positive force, bringing joy to our users.

❤️ Prioritize conscience, staying true to our principles.

- @Durov

🕶🕶🕶🕶 Telegram’s birthday/summer gifts sold out in under 3 minutes, grossing over $11M.
To make this round fairer, we limited purchases of Durov’s Sunglasses 🕶 (~$600, max 3 per user) and Resistance Dog 🕶 (~$100, max 5 per user) to Premium users only. Still, both sold out in 15 seconds. 🥹

Should we release 2-3 more gifts on September 1st with even tighter buying restrictions? 🤔

📰 Photo session with Pavel Durov, Manuel Stotz and Andrey Rogozov.

The first one is the CEO of Telegram;
The second is the executive chairman of TON Strategy Co and former president of the TON Foundation;
The third one is the founder and CEO of The Open Platform.

📰 Now you can withdraw your TON! 💎 Update to iOS 11.14.1, 2 months after they were added, was the first to be able 💸 to withdraw your crypt from the settings section "My TON" to your wallet. The procedure takes place in fragment.com, and therefore you will need KYC. ☝️The function may not work for everyone.

🎁 The TON withdrawal will be very useful for those who want to take away unnecessary cryptocurrencies for themselves or no longer use the paid messenger functionality (offers of posts and gifts).

📰 Adding music to profile is a #new feature in beta version 11.15.275131 for macOS (and in the closed ß-version 11.15). 🎶 To add an audio file to your profile, click "Add to profile" in the built-in player; all added files will be in a special playlist of your account, which can be listened to by every(!) user.

Thanks: 💌💌💌