Dan Morehead’s Hedge Fund Pantera Capital Says Largest Investment Can ‘Bring Crypto to the World’

Hedge fund Pantera Capital says one project, which is the firm’s “largest investment ever,” has an opportunity to bring crypto to the masses.

In a new post, Pantera CEO Dan Morehead says that Toncoin (TON), the layer-1 blockchain network originally designed by the messaging platform Telegram, has a major advantage over other projects in building a large community.

“99.999% of blockchain projects are a tech idea trying to create a community – from nothing. According to CoinMarketCap, there are more than 23,000 cryptocurrencies. That’s a hard road for most.

Telegram is a community integrating blockchain technology. That’s just got to be easier.”

According to Statista, Telegram has over 900 million monthly active users.

Given that Telegram has a built-in crypto wallet, the hedge fund argues it has an advantage in onboarding its large, already-existing user base into the digital asset ecosystem without the complexities of traditional self-custody wallets that include the use of seed phrases.

Based in Dubai, Pantera also says that Telegram is largely free from the regulatory hurdles that digital asset projects face in less crypto-friendly jurisdictions like the US.

“What about the other top messengers? Telegram is the only major platform that is free of regulatory hurdles to incorporate web3 for an open blockchain network. While [Facebook] Messenger attempted to incorporate crypto payments with Libra, they ultimately faced regulatory hurdles from the US that led to a complete shutdown.

WeChat has attempted to integrate CBDC payments of digital yuan, but the system is limited in scope and builders don’t have the ability to create permissionless applications.

We believe Telegram is well positioned to bring crypto to the world because of its shared web3 ethos and large distribution.”

At time of writing, TON is trading at $6.94.

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