Coinbase Ventures, the investment division of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase COIN, has taken a position in Toncoin, the native asset of The Open Network TON/USD blockchain, the platform underpinning Telegram's web3 infrastructure.

What Happened: The TON Foundation disclosed the move in a Monday post on X, describing the backing as a significant signal of confidence, though without revealing the size of the holding.

Manuel Stotz, president of the TON Foundation, founder and CEO of Kingsway Capital, and incoming executive chairman of TON-focused digital asset treasury firm Verb Technology VERB, confirmed to The Block that Coinbase Ventures purchased the tokens directly from Telegram.

He declined to share the investment amount.

A Coinbase Ventures spokesperson described the purchase as a "long-term venture investment in TON," without specifying the seller, timing, or transaction size.

The spokesperson added that token-based investments are a standard approach for onchain projects, aligning with how many venture capital firms participate in the ecosystem.

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Why It Matters: The TON Foundation has previously named Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Ribbit Capital among its early backers.

Other institutional supporters include Pantera Capital, Ryze Labs (formerly Sino Global Capital), and Animoca Brands, which have invested heavily in TON, drawn to its exclusive integration with Telegram, a messaging platform with over 1 billion monthly active users.

Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu has called the TON token "a distribution play," noting Telegram's scale as both a strength and a dependency risk.

The Coinbase Ventures investment adds to a series of recent TON developments.

Last week, Nasdaq-listed Verb Technology announced a $558 million private placement in partnership with Kingsway Capital, positioning itself as the first publicly traded company to hold Toncoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, with plans to rebrand as TON Strategy Co.

In July, TON developer The Open Platform closed a $28.5 million Series A round led by Ribbit Capital, valuing the project at $1 billion.

Toncoin is the 26th-largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of approximately $8.7 billion and a fully diluted valuation of about $17.4 billion, according to The Block.

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