Durov's arrest is bad Omen for Telegram-linked Toncoin & Crypto realm

Telegram-linked Toncoin (TON) took a steep dive amid panic selling after French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Saturday on charges linked to criminal uses of his app, including terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, and fraud.

Pavel Durov’s arrest is a bad omen for Telegram-linked Toncoin (TON) and the cryptocurrency realm in general, Paul Goncharoff, chief manager of the consulting firm Goncharoff LLC, told Sputnik.

“The ease with which France (read G7) simply arrested and jailed Pavel Durov as a means of pressuring him to 'open the backdoor' of confidentiality protection does not bode well for the cryptocurrency realms as it is an attack on the principles of trustless transactions and the confidentiality of participants, like the closure of anonymous numbered bank accounts of the past,” he said.

Trustless systems allow participants to carry out transactions in a peer-to-peer (P2P) setting, and are the opposite of centralized systems, such as banks.

As Pavel Durov’s detention continues, sparking an outcry over what is perceived as an attack on free speech rights, Toncoin’s future will hinge to a degree on what happens to Telegram, Goncharoff speculated.

While Toncoin was initially created independent of Telegram, “its use cases and future are closely linked to Telegram Apps,” he noted.

“When Pavel Durov was arrested in France, one of the first effects was a mini-dump of TON. How will it look in the future? That is somewhat dependent on the future of Telegram and whether it can maintain its independent operation without sacrificing user security to governmental organs of control. It is a case of an unconnected cryptocurrency that is, nonetheless, dependent for fast growth on playing a role in the Telegram ecosystem.”

TON’s price slumped by as much as 25% to reach $5.24 on August 25, a day after the news of Durov’s detention broke. As of 8:20 pm GMT on August 24, before Durov’s detention, the TON exchange rate was $6.797. Telegram’s Russian-born CEO is accused of ostensibly enabling criminal activities through insufficient moderation of the platform. Furthermore, the charges are related to the tools provided by the application to sell cryptocurrency, the television channel TF1 reported.

Furthermore, the TON blockchain announced on August 28 that it was experiencing a disruption in block production. Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, suspended all Toncoin deposits and withdrawals due to the network’s instability.

All that said, according to Goncharoff, it is "too early to say what inter-relationship will evolve, as the key issue is confidentiality and the secure ownership of a crypto asset,” the pundit said.

Now that Durov’s arrest has sparked numerous discussions about the freedom of speech, user privacy, and CEO accountability, Paul Goncharoff voiced the opinion that Telegram “will become the freedom standard for the non-G7 world, read that as BRICS.”

“This may very well turn into a very visible example of the democratic freedom under the G7 slogan 'the rules are for you, but not for us,' or 'do it our way, or hit the highway.' This may evolve into an issue far larger than itself, and has every chance of further showcasing the political and rules-abetted hypocrisy running rampant throughout the Western world. It is not as if everyone is squeaky-clean, however the dissonance is far worse when preaching democratic 'values,' and at the same time trampling them into oblivion – it is a very slippery slope we're on,” he concluded.