Toncoin bucks market slump as Telegram’s Durov addresses arrest in France

Toncoin, a digital asset tied to Telegram, stood out in a declining market after the app’s founder, Pavel Durov, broke his silence following his arrest in France.

CryptoSlate data shows that Toncoin rose by over 4% in the past 24 hours, reaching $5 before settling around $4.77 at press time. Meanwhile, top assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, and Solana saw more than 2% losses during the same period.

Despite Toncoin’s gains, IntoTheBlock data reveals that most holders are down. Around 80% of the 43 million addresses are “out of the money,” while only 9.3% of holders, or 5 million addresses, are “in the money.”

Durov’s statement

On Sept. 5, Durov addressed his arrest through his Telegram channel, expressing surprise at the actions of French authorities. He noted that Telegram has a designated representative in the EU for regulatory and legal matters.

Durov pointed out that French authorities had other ways to contact him and mentioned his regular visits to the French Consulate in Dubai.

He emphasized that Telegram is prepared to exit regions that oppose its free speech principles, stating:

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.

Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

FAQ update

After Durov’s statement, Telegram updated its FAQ page, reflecting a shift in its content moderation policies.

Previously, the platform maintained that all chats were private and did not process content-related requests. However, the updated language now promotes using Telegram’s “report” button to flag illegal content.

Notably, Durov had hinted at further improvements on the messaging application, stating:

“I [have] made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”

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