BTC half rallies

Bitcoin fell below $60,000 last night. But it has since rallied above $64,000. BTC's dipsy-doodle through hostile bear territory coincides with a deflationary event four years in the making and set to occur today.

As of 7:40 a.m. (EST), the most humongous crypto actually lurched toward the lower ledge of the $65K level on a 24-hour gain of 4%.

It's now a matter of hours before the halving. CoinGecko's countdown clock pegs the miner rewards reduction as set to trigger later this evening.

Meanwhile, Toncoin continues to romp. TON, ninth-largest coin, per CoinGecko, spiked 15% to $7.14 following an announcement that Tether (USDT) will launch on the TON blockchain (The Open Network) in conjunction with the Telegram wallet.

Prior Bitcoin halvings (2012, 2016 and 2020) were followed by abundant rallies. This time around, though, analyst skepticism abounds.

"We do not expect Bitcoin price increases post halving," JPMorgan researchers said this week. "It has been already priced in."

JPMorgan expects BTC's price to fall after the halving, calling the foremost crypto "overbought."

On January 23, 2024, BTC dipped to $38,500. It's up a whopping 68% since then.

However, BTC remains down 8% over the past week.

The Telegram community (said to be 900 million strong) and related threads on the topic of future profitability have captured the market's attention.

Last April, Toncoin was two dollars and change. How it indirectly tied into Telegram, with which it previously had direct ties, was hinted at but never quite clear.

In recent months, however, the privately held, privacy-focused messaging app has integrated TON into ad buy and revenue sharing programs (Decrypt).

TON is the native asset of the TON chain initially developed by Telegram before being hived off so as to run at arm’s length. Now the TON network is poised for further expansion, with its tentacles hooked into Tether, the most enormous stablecoin and something of a financial bulwark.

“We really anticipate this being a catalyst for Telegram mini-apps to proliferate,” Justin Hyun, the TON Foundation’s investment chief, told Decrypt.

Hyun’s instant message to devs: “‘Come and build on TON, now that there’s USDT.'”

Telegram's billionaire founder, Pavel Durov, earlier this week touted the notion that his platform will soon cross one billion active users, possibly within a year. He described “wildfire” conditions.

Back in March, Durov teased the idea of an IPO during an interview with the FT. "Generally speaking, we see value in it as a means to democratize access to Telegram's value," he said.

Telegram is based in Dubai. Durov, born in Russia, left that country in 2014 after refusing to comply with censorship demands connected with an earlier social media platform, VK, which was later sold.

On the one hand, a monetization event could be seen as a means to an end – the platform staying independent – although an IPO does seem incompatible with Telegram's community-steeped ambitions.

Telegram isn't organized as a traditional corporation. There's no board, no executive team. "Pavel Durov calls the shots," Reuters said.

Any future IPO would likely involve the sale of a minority float (less than half) of Telegram's stock on the open market, similar to the playbook used (in 2012) by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and, eight years before that, by Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. FYI: a $16K investment in Google's IPO in 2004 would be worth $1 million today.