Is Ton dead? Anthony Scaramucci supports Telegram’s long game
One might think that with a billion users, Telegram and tons of cryptocurrencies would take the world by storm. But like other cryptocurrencies, Ton Crypto has not fared well in the past year as winter winds are blowing hard.
The block has lost nearly $700 million in TVL since its 2024 peak. So, is Ton dead or is the Great One coming back?
The tragedy of Tonkoin
According to data aggregator CoinGecko, the price of a ton has fallen by 67% in the past year. That's a ton of cool.
In the past, Telegram-based meme coins like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat have pushed Toncoin to an all-time high of over $8 in June 2024.
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While the ton price may not be performing as well as those 2024 salad days, there is still forward movement in the Telegram ecosystem in terms of development.
A good US location will make Telegram Wallet accessible to Americans in July 2025.
In the year In November 2025, Coinbase will finally list Ton on the exchange, which could be a sign for the nearly 100 million messaging users in the United States.
Now, as 2026 rolls out, Telegram is bringing AI—and tons—forward.
DAT-titude tone
A sign of a mature ton is that there are now a number of connected digital assets, or data, running around the ecosystem. The best known is the Ton Strategy (NASDAQ: TONX ) led by Manuel Stotts.
But then there's Alphaton (NASDAQ: ATON ). Transferred from Portage Biotech in September 2025 and hopefully helped lead the evolution of TON-AI.
Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO of this center A decentralized protocol announced by the end of 2025 is Cocoon AI.
AlphaTON is helping expand the decentralized AI network by securing a $46 million deal for NVadia GPUs to compete with centralized players like OpenAI and xAI.
“The way I see it, when I look at the biggest super apps in the world, most of them have their own AI,” Alphatone CEO Britney Kaiser told Incrypto.
The big difference between the many centralized AI players and crypto-backed decentralization is the self-sustaining economy they create.
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Firms like AlphaTON are providing computing services to developers who want to build Cocoon AI-based apps in Telegram.
But in the novel Chaos, developers have to pay tons for services to access Cocoon AI. This differs from Bittensor-style economics, where miners are providing decentralized AI computing power and users must pay for services in Bittensor's native TAO token.
Decentralized AI economy
By increasing demand, building economic value for cryptocurrencies like TON can drive their value higher. It's something Anthony Scaramucci, a strategic consultant and co-founder of SkyBridge Capital, tells BIncrypto that he finds attractive.
Having served as White House communications director for the first Trump administration for ten days, or “like a second, actually — 954,000 seconds,” as Scaramucci likes to say, he's been big-time in various cryptocurrency endeavors and isn't fazed by market turmoil.
Bitcoin price performance over the past year. Source: CoinGecko
“It's actually going to be a dark winter on October 10 for all cryptocurrencies, and that includes Bitcoin,” Scaramucci told BEncrypto.
His company, SkyBridge, has been a major supporter of Tons – even before the recent crypto boom.
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“I'm a believer in multi-chain society and multi-chain roles.” Mook believes Alfato's efforts can help him strategically. “I signed on as a strategic consultant. We're providing some marketing support. We're providing some networking.”
AlphaTON CEO Kaiser paints a bright future for Ton-Telegram-AI integrations, citing the Guardian's Telegram Wallet as a big driver of the next-generation economy — all within the app.
“There are over a billion monthly active users on Telegram, and over 200 million wallet users,” Kaiser said.
AI in Super App
When you think about actual implementations of consumer artificial intelligence products, with the exception of OpenAI's ChatGPT, most of them reside within existing services.
Google's Gemini is already in its search product, XAI powers X's Grok, and Meta AI powers Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
“The way I see it, when I look at the biggest super apps in the world, most of them have their own AI,” Kaiser said.
Although Telegram's Cocoon AI launched with minimal buzz, it has the potential to grow over time within Telegram's “super app” platform — a term now used for many applications. Like Telegram.
That's Alphaton's game, like Kaysir.
“We raised our first pipe to buy a ton treasury, which stores and validates and receives ton returns,” she said.
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AI as an industry is expected to grow to over $900 billion by 2026.
“Now, being able to get tons by providing GPUs to do AI is another way we get tons. And then we're including revenues to get tons.” So AlphaTON is basically a ton-on-ton-on-ton.
Keeping all AI Rosy.
Crypto, with the creation of AI, is clearly looking for companies that can make money. DATs, like public entities, need to make money to survive, which is why many are diversifying holdings into other lines of business – like AlphaTON did with AI.
Advances in AI, and “agents” that can perform tasks for humans when taking cryptocurrency like tons, have seen past some of the currency market turmoil and attracted investors looking to the future.
“I think that's a huge opportunity, and I see a lot of third-party app developers building new DeFi products on Telegram, where AI agents do or execute financial transactions for you in the app,” Kaiser added.
And Scaramucci also thinks that he can help with this difference.
“Hopefully, there are a few investments here that will end up in an Alphaton vehicle that we're responsible for,” he told BeinCrip.
For many investors with a long-term view, this is all cyclical. Scaramucci sees Alphatone as a diversified investor in the Telegram and Tone ecosystem that could eventually return to the glory days of Tone 2024.
“My sense is that we will start with a plan and then over the next 24 to 36 months we will have a strong company with good operating income and a lot of growth,” Scaramucci added.
