The founder of Telegram has been accused of his team systematically selling off Gram tokens and disregarding the interests of investors. The claims came in response to Pavel Durov's post about 700,000 new wallets appearing in the messenger.

Token sell-offs were called Gram's main problem

Durov reported that within 48 hours more than 700,000 non-custodial wallets appeared in Telegram — that is, wallets where the keys are held by the user rather than the service. According to him, the wallet is activated at the moment Gram is received, so distribution is going viral. He added that the crypto revolution is gaining momentum.

The market will not react to any statements as long as the token is treated as a "personal piggy bank." That was Ran Neuner's response to Durov, the founder of Crypto Banter. He emphasized that he respects Telegram's success, and his complaints are only about Gram.

Neuner stated that Durov's team constantly sells tokens. He separately criticized the deals of the project's treasury company — the structure that holds digital assets on its balance sheet. According to him, it used investors' money to buy locked tokens from the fund. Neuner called such deals bordering on fraud.

For Gram holders, this means that the growth in the number of wallets will not by itself support the cryptocurrency's price. Neuner believes the project has the greatest opportunities in the entire crypto industry, but there will be no success until the team starts respecting investors.

The project's promises were called into question

X user Vadim spoke even more bluntly. He stated that Durov is again telling nonsense to a mass audience that doesn't understand how the industry works. According to him, the token's price was previously pumped up with similar statements:

  • the highest staking yield, that is, the reward for locking up coins, although it is paid for by issuing new tokens;
  • a million transactions per second, although the figure was obtained in a test network, and the real load is far from it;
  • a billion potential blockchain users from Telegram, who never materialized over three years.

Vadim noted that he feels sorry for the naive people who believe all of this. He considers TON and Gram to be among the most striking examples of extracting money from investors in the crypto industry.

Cryptalist analysis: The situation around Gram demonstrates a classic conflict of interest between the project team and retail holders: aggressive marketing and growing activity metrics are not yet backed by transparent tokenomics and respect for investors. For the institutional market, the key signal remains the structure of treasury deals and the distribution of unlocked tokens — these are the factors that will determine the resilience of Gram's price in the medium term.