Telegram’s $222mn Loss Exposes Deep Reliance on Toncoin

The numbers, reported by the Financial Times on 6 Jan, paint a picture of a company dangerously overexposed to the volatility of a single token: Toncoin.

On paper, Telegram is growing. Revenue hit $870mn in the first half of 2025, up 65% from the previous year. The company is targeting $2bn for the full year. But the quality of that revenue is suspect.

Nearly one-third of it, roughly $300mn, comes from "exclusivity agreements" directly tied to Toncoin. This is not organic ad revenue or sustainable subscription growth. It is income derived from a crypto ecosystem that Telegram itself willed into existence.

The danger of this circular economy is already showing on the balance sheet. As of 30 Jun 2025, Telegram held $787mn in digital assets. This is a sharp drop from the $1.3bn held a year earlier. The decline was not just market movement. The company was forced to sell over $450mn worth of Toncoin to keep the lights on.

The need to liquidate crypto assets is being driven by a massive hole in Telegram’s traditional financing. The Financial Times revealed that $500mn of its bonds are frozen in Russia due to sanctions on the National Settlement Depository.

This capital is effectively dead. With half a billion dollars locked out of reach, Telegram has lost a critical liquidity buffer. This forces the company to rely even more heavily on its crypto reserves to service its obligations.

This creates a dangerous feedback loop. To cover the liquidity shortfall, Telegram must sell Toncoin. But dumping hundreds of millions of dollars of the token onto the open market depresses the price. This further shrinks the value of the remaining assets on Telegram’s balance sheet.

Investors need to understand that Telegram is now structurally different from peers like WhatsApp or Signal. It is a crypto-adjacent entity where solvency is correlated with the chart performance of a volatile altcoin.

Back in April 2024, Reuters reported that the "TON ecosystem" was being positioned as the driver of Telegram's future growth. That bet has now turned toxic. If TON rallies, Telegram survives. If the token fails to recover from its 2025 crash, the company faces an acute squeeze. It has frozen bonds on one side and a depreciating treasury on the other.

The "messaging app" is now just the front end. The real business is managing a high-risk crypto portfolio.