Bessie Liu

<div id="highlights-block_dc57bf2e467ef6dd99f857a7be95c787" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Buyers can use USD, EUR, UAH, BYN and KZT to purchase cryptocurrencies</li>
 <li>Only toncoin (TON) and bitcoin (BTC) can be purchased for now and only TON can be transferred via chat messages</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Developers behind the Telegram @Wallet Bot, which allows Telegram users to purchase cryptocurrencies with a bank card, exchange and transfer to other wallets, have launched a P2P cryptocurrency exchange.



The Wallet Bot <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/telegram-users-can-now-send-receive-crypto-following-2-year-hiatus/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launched in April</a>, allowing Telegram users to buy toncoin (TON) and send it within chat messages. The latest update will allow sales of cryptocurrencies between users through the Telegram app, with the exchange services acting as guarantors for each transaction. In any case of disagreement between the seller and the buyer, the service will conduct a dispute resolution process.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-are-seed-phrases">What Are Seed Phrases and Are They Needed? The New Debate</a>



The service is pitched as offering “anonymous P2P deals,” however, users must share their mobile phone number with the bot in order to deposit, exchange or purchase crypto.



Users who wish to sell cryptocurrencies will be paying a 0.9% commission, while buyers will not need to pay any fees, according to a statement by developers of the @Wallet bot.



To sell tokens, users will post notices in the app, which buyers can then select from. Buyers can use USD, EUR, UAH, BYN and KZT to purchase cryptocurrencies.&nbsp;



Toncoin (TON) and bitcoin (BTC) are available for purchase at the moment, with plans to increase the offering at a later date, according to the company. Only TON is able to be sent between users directly through chats.



“It is aimed towards ordinary users and provides a low entry threshold for learning about blockchain. Many services on TON are similar to the usual applications that people are already used to using,” a TON Foundation representative told Blockworks.



&#8220;Without leaving Telegram you can buy cryptocurrency, send it to your friends using a short nickname without long wallet addresses, get access to the internet with the @mobile bot, pay for a subscription to your favorite Telegram channel along with many other services,&#8221; the representative said.



The TON blockchain that was originally founded by the Durov brothers, the founders of Telegram Messenger. Telegram previously intended to launch an official token, GRAM, but was <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-146" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">prevented from doing so</a> by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2020, forced to return $1.2 billion raised for the project to investors and pay an $18.5 million fine.



The TON Foundation “is a decentralized community started by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelyanenko after Telegram stepped away from the project,” <a href="https://ton.org/en/community" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to its website</a>.



“One of the goals is to merge blockchain technology with the traditional internet,” the spokesperson said. “In order to further this decentralized concept, TON is creating its own ecosystem, which already includes DNS, sites, and proxies.”



The total number of custodial wallet accounts has grown to 1.3 million according to <a href="https://tontech.io/stats/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a stats page</a> provided by the group, however the <a href="https://toncoin.tonscan.io/accounts" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ton Scan block explorer</a> was not displaying any information as of press time.



The <a href="https://t.me/s/toncoin" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TON community Telegram group</a> has 630,000 subscribers.



The TON token is trading at $1.39 as of 9:00 am ET, with a market capitalization of about $1.7 billion and circulating supply of 1.22 billion TON, <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/toncoin/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a> CoinMarketCap.



Macauley Peterson contributed reporting.



This story was updated on Oct. 4 at 10:09 am ET.



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Telegram @Wallet Bot Now Lets Users Exchange Crypto With Each Other

<div id="highlights-block_6307741886231" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Comm CEO Ashoat Tevosyan wants to build a “fully sovereign, fully end-to-end encrypted and fully private” application</li>
 <li>&#8216;Web2&#8217; app Discord remains one of the primary communication platforms for crypto enthusiasts</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Web3 messaging app Comm has raised a $5 million seed round led by CoinFund, funds the startup hopes will set it up to compete with Discord.



The consumer privacy startup is working on scaling end-to-end (E2E) encryption that currently only works for chat apps such as Signal or Whatsapp, with a mind to eventually replace centralized backends.&nbsp;



Ashoat Tevosyan, founder and CEO of Comm told Blockworks that he wanted to make an app that was “fully sovereign, fully end-to-end encrypted and fully private.”



Other investors in the seed round include Electric Capital, Slow Ventures, LongHash VC, Shima Capital and Eniac Ventures.



Comm is being designed so that community members host their own backend servers and only users themselves can access their data. The keyserver software is open-sourced and built to be forked (copied and implemented by other projects).



Although encrypted messaging apps can help protect individual data, many of these apps have <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/encrypted-messaging-app-anom-fbi-organized-crime.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fallen into the hands</a> of organized criminals and gangs.&nbsp;



To Tevosyan, regardless of whether or not Comm exists, criminals will always find a way to access online networks to continue criminal activity.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;re creating software that puts the user in charge and ultimately, that might mean that these situations, these communities can hypothetically use the software,” he said.



Despite this, he said he wants Comm to be a software that supports larger communities and is skeptical of the idea that a large-scale social platform would attract “seedy characters.”



Tevosyan added: “It is possible, but my own perspective on this moral question is that we don’t think we’re providing a service that is good for these people [criminals].&#8221;



There are currently four full-time employees at Comm and around 12 part-time contributors to the project. Tevosyan said he plans to continue growing his team in New York City after the raise, with a handful of employees working remotely.&nbsp;



Despite this, he said his ultimate vision for the company is not yet entirely clear. Users will be able to log in to Comm via their crypto wallets, which controls their overall identity in the app, although it&#8217;s not immediately known which blockchains will be supported.



“You have an easier time bootstrapping when you have kind of like a clear vision from the top. We&#8217;re not quite there yet but we do believe in long-term and potential values [of Comm],” he said.



“Our most radical viewpoint is that in the future, everybody will have a personal private server,” Tevosyan said. “We&#8217;re gonna have a world where users are going to ultimately make the decision to build on top of a platform that offers them the privacy that they need to get to the next step of human-computer evolution.”



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