Anchorage: First Qualified Custodian for Telegram’s Gram

Anchorage will add Gram, the native currency of the Telegram Open Network (TON), to its lineup of supported assets. Anchorage Trust Company is the first Qualified Custodian that will support institutional custody for Gram at launch on October 31. This will enable institutional investors, and organizations developing products and services on TON, to hold their Gram securely with a Qualified Custodian. We are proud to bring regulated, auditable custody to the TON ecosystem.

With more than 200 million active users and 70 billion messages exchanged per day, Telegram is among the world’s largest messaging applications. In part because of the scale of the Telegram user base, Gram has already attracted several institutional investors, with $1.7 billion of Gram tokens pre-sold in two private placements in 2018.

Those who wish to hold Gram will be able to acquire it in two ways: by purchasing existing Grams on the open market, or by purchasing new Grams from the TON Reserve. These two markets are meant to counterbalance each other, and stabilize both the price and supply of Grams. According to the TON white paper, the TON Reserve will incrementally increase the price of new Grams with every Gram sold following an exponentially increasing function: the first Gram will be priced at $0.10, and every subsequent Gram will be sold for one billionth more than the previous price. However, the free market price for existing Grams may be different than the TON Reserve price set by the TON Reserve for new Grams, and users are expected to seek the lowest price, turning to existing Grams when the market price is lower than the Reserve price, and new Grams when the market price is higher.

As a new blockchain that builds on advances made over the last ten years, TON incorporates several innovative features, such as multiple chains (master and shard chains) and novel proof of stake algorithms. TON will use bespoke low- and high-level languages, a custom virtual machine, and new consensus and participation mechanisms inspired by existing blockchains and academic research, to meet the ambitious goal of serving Telegram’s hundreds of millions of active users. There is also a vibrant developer ecosystem emerging around TON, with projects providing support for C and Solidity to be run on the blockchain.

If you’re an institutional investor who holds or plans to hold Gram, or if you’d like to learn more about our asset support roadmap or our support for a specific asset of interest to you, please get in touch.