Three days after the breaking news of Pavel Durov’s arrest, the price of the crypto TON remains suppressed at 5.4 dollars with an overall decrease of 20%.
The founder of Telegram had been arrested on Saturday evening at the Paris airport by the French police, hit by very serious charges.
The crypto community, shocked by the event, has decided to offer its public support to the cause by supporting Durov and the principles of freedom and privacy on which Telegram is founded.
Let’s see all the details below
The crypto news of the arrest of Pavel Durov, co-founder of Telegram
Saturday, August 24 at 10:00 PM (UTC+1) the price of the crypto TON plummeted after the news of Pavel Durov’s arrest in Paris was spread.
The Russian billionaire, known for being one of the two co-founding brothers of Telegram, was detained by French police at Le Bourget airport.
The reason is simple: Durov is complicit in not having moderated the content published on the Telegram platform in the country, and in not having cooperated with the local authorities.
Yesterday the official press release of the arrest arrived: France supports a total of 12 charges against the patron of the social media.
Specifically, the charges are related to activities of money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, child pornography material, and terrorism.
Source:https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files/2024-08/2024-08-26%20-%20CP%20TELEGRAM%20.pdf
For a long time, Durov has refused to cooperate with the Parisian justice system and to censor some excessively explicit content on his platform.
The young billionaire, who has been living in Dubai for some time now, would not have any relations with Moscow either, given the anarchic nature of Telegram.
The desire to preserve the privacy of users, as a fundamental principle of the social media, has thus caused no small problems for its founder.
Telegram is publicly known for being a messaging app based on crittografia end-to-end and aimed at ensuring the privacy of users.
This last aspect, for a government that intends to keep its citizens at bay and centralize every type of control, is not exactly the best.
Let’s see how the situation will evolve now and if the Russian embassy will be able to make contact with France in the coming days.
The crypto community rallies around Durov and defends the ideals of privacy and decentralization
The news of Pavel Durov’s arrest, in addition to triggering the decline in the price of TON, has sparked the immediate reaction of the crypto community.
Some of the most influential people from all over the world have come together to defend the principles of privacy and decentralization in the face of the abuses by France.
Among these, we find the multi-billionaire Elon Musk, also accused of similar charges by the European authorities.
Just like Telegram in fact, X also supports freedom of speech, limiting censorship as much as possible even in countries with more restrictive limitations in this regard.
Even Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, has expressed his virtual support to Durov and the Telegram ecosystem after the bad news on Saturday.
Vitalik is also engaged with his company in the mission of spreading the ideals of decentralization of privacy.
The violence of the French authorities potentially represents an attack on the core values of the Ethereum ecosystem, and therefore it is necessary to distance oneself from it
At the court of the supporters, Edward Snowden, an American computer scientist and activist naturalized Russian, known for having disseminated classified material from the US government, could not be missing.
The Whistleblower is one of the major defenders of the principles of open source, free dialogue, and user privacy. He too has sided in defense of Durov, calling the news a true and proper assault on the human right of freedom of expression
Finally, even the crypto community of TON has publicly expressed its support for Durov in this particularly difficult moment.
Users, developers, enthusiasts, and managers of cryptographic projects have come together to ensure the full autonomy of the Telegram platform, even in this situation.
In reality, the social media is independent from Durov and would function even without his presence as the general supervisor.
The price of TON drops by 20% after the news
As soon as the news of Durov’s arrest spread publicly, the crypto TON plummeted to one of the lowest price levels in the last 4 months.
In particular, on August 24, the day when the founder of Telegram was detained at the airport of Paris, TON recorded a decrease of 11.64%.
The following day, sales continued, marking a modest loss of 2.60%, only to culminate with yesterday’s final bear of 11.09%.
Overall TON has lost 19%, quickly dropping from 6.7 dollars to the current 5.4 dollars.
Today the situation seems calmer and the crypto weakly tries to mark the first green candle after 3 days of hell.
The rebound today amounts to 5.36% of the price of the currency.
The trend of the price of TON could face further days of difficulty if it falls below the psychological threshold of 5 dollars.
In that case, it would put pressure on the recent support touched during the general market retracement at the beginning of August, aggravating its chart structure.
If instead TON manages to stay above that level, or recovers with a spike from a possible bear dip, it could slowly recover.
Maintaining the macro range of 8-5 dollars, the crypto would create a lateral price structure, whose potential breakout to the upside would trigger yet another leg up of the year.
Watch out for fake movements as well: the crypto might try to take liquidity even down to the 4.6 dollars area. The important thing is not to close a weekly below the lower end of the range.
At the moment the short-term trend remains bearish, waiting for the identification of the local bottom.
Analysis of TON derivatives data: open interest on the rise
While the price of TON is experiencing a strong downtrend in the wake of bad news in the Telegram world, the situation on the front of crypto derivatives is starting to heat up
In particular the open interest of the crypto exchanges on TON, that is the total number of derivative contracts not yet settled, skyrocketed after the news.
A few hours after Durov’s arrest, we witnessed a sudden increase in open trades up to 303 million dollars, with a 32% increase.
At the time of writing, according to Coinglass data, the open interest remains high at 344 million dollars, highlighting a situation of extensive trading.
Traders are betting large sums of capital on the next movement of the TON crypto, both in bull and bear directions.
We expect a lot of volatility in the coming days, with potential liquidations of users excessively exposed to leverage.
Source: https://www.coinglass.com/BitcoinOpenInterest
The funding rate on TON appears to be uneven across different futures trading exchanges, highlighting a very unstable price scenario.
On platforms like Binance, Bybit, and Bitmex, the funding rate is positive, so the shorts pay the longs to keep their positions open.
On the contrary, on Okx and Crypto.com the negative funding rate offers the opportunity for the shorts to be paid by the longs with the maintenance rates.
The situation is particularly unstable and heated.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2024/08/27/the-price-of-the-crypto-ton-plummets-by-20-after-the-news-of-the-arrest-of-the-founder-of-telegram/