Weekly News Digest for June 9–15, 2025
▪️The Plush Pepe NFT collection on TON holds 42.5% of the Telegram gifts market by trading volume.
▪️TgConf 2025 will take place in Moscow on October 15-16 with an expanded program, 70+ speakers, and over 4,000 participants.
▪️An auction has started for the NFT Aqua Protocol, which grants full control over the project, including source code and all related assets.
▪️Pavel Durov reported a multi-fold increase in prices for collectible Telegram gifts and that TON has taken the #1 spot for daily NFT trading volume.
▪️TON Foundation head Max Crown announced a plan to attract one billion users by 2028 through TON’s integration with Telegram and the development of real payments, games, and tokenized assets.
▪️Freelance exchange FL.ru and developer forum TMA Build have started collaborating to help find specialists and run joint contests and hackathons.
▪️Telegram founder Pavel Durov revealed for the first time that he has been under house arrest in France for ten months following a politically motivated detention.
▪️NFT trading volume on TON reached $9.7 million.
▪️The fully diluted market cap of Telegram NFT gifts on TON exceeded $300 million.
▪️Tokenized gold $XAUT appeared on the xRocket platform, where gold NFT-gifts are being raffled among token holders.
▪️MRKT released an update: improved gift search by number, added Pre-Market activity to the feed, optimized referrals and filters, and now the floor price of collections is shown in the list.
▪️ONTON and TBook announced a strategic partnership and are preparing a fair launch of a new community-focused project.
▪️Azuki launched an official Telegram channel for project, anime, and art news, announcements, and giveaways.
▪️TON cryptocurrency trended on X (formerly Twitter) on June 10 due to growing interest and activity around the Telegram ecosystem and partnerships with major companies.
▪️Pengu Clash game launches June 18.
▪️The TradingView team said in an AMA they might add a Telegram Gifts chart if the market remains fair and transparent.
▪️Telegram denied accusations that its server contractors are connected to Russian intelligence, stating that none have access to user data and all servers are owned and maintained solely by Telegram staff.
▪️Max Crown’s May review highlights TON’s rapid development, including tokenized gold, high-yield stablecoins, and attracting institutional investors.
▪️The Stickers market reached a capitalization of $26.2 million with $557,748 in daily turnover.
▪️MRKT added an automatic pause for giveaway timers during maintenance, “Pre-Market” tags in the feed, floor price display for listed gifts, and the ability to share feed events.
▪️The first-ever TON Demo Day will take place on June 24, where five teams will present their projects live to top investors.
▪️DYOR.io now displays burned tokens, and their amount is automatically excluded from circulation, making it easy to track burn impact on total supply.
▪️Plush Pepe’s floor price hit 5,000 TON.
▪️Bored Apes 9780’s floor price reached 100 TON.
▪️DappRadar added support for NFTs on the TON blockchain.
▪️On June 10, 2025, Tether acquired 31.9% of Elemental Altus Royalties to strengthen its position in gold-backed and real asset financial infrastructure.
▪️Sticker Pack team leader announced tokenization of their stickers as NFTs, collaborations with major projects, and fighting bots on marketplaces.
▪️TON Foundation appointed new leaders: Anton Tsivarev as VP of Ecosystem Development and Alyona Shmalko as Ecosystem Success Director.
▪️BAYC launched the official Bored Ape Yacht Club Telegram channel.
▪️A new sticker marketplace, IGLOO Market, has appeared.
▪️Strategy bought another 1,045 BTC at $105,426 per coin. The company now holds 582,000 BTC worth $62.7 billion.
▪️Japanese holding ANAP plans to accumulate 1,000 BTC by August 2025 — they've already acquired 585 BTC.
▪️Tether plans to launch its open-source Bitcoin mining operating system (MOS) by the end of 2025.
▪️The Plasma project raised about $500 million in just a few minutes.
▪️One user spent 39 ETH ($100,000) in fees to invest $10 million USDC in Plasma.
▪️Binance helped the US and Taiwan shut down the Incognito Market darknet marketplace, which had $100 million in drug turnover.
▪️Crypto funds attracted a record $7 billion in May — institutional investors are investing in digital assets for protection and diversification amid volatile markets.
▪️Ethereum staking reached a new all-time high — 34,809,062 ETH.
▪️South Korea will allow stablecoins — President Lee Jae-myung’s new administration presented a plan enabling local companies to issue stablecoins.
▪️Evita Pay crypto company founder Yuri Gugnin was arrested in New York, accused of laundering $530 million through crypto.
▪️French bank Societe Generale issued a dollar stablecoin USDCV — the token will be available on Ethereum and Solana, with BNY Mellon as the asset custodian.
▪️The Blockchain Group shareholders approved increasing capital raising up to €10 billion for further BTC purchases.
▪️US company Mercurity Fintech plans to create a Bitcoin reserve — raising $800 million to buy BTC.
▪️The US Treasury Secretary believes stablecoin market cap could exceed $2 trillion in the next few years.
▪️Arkham reports BlackRock bought $570 million worth of Ethereum in the past two weeks.
▪️China’s largest fintech Ant Group plans to implement stablecoin payments and is preparing to apply for licenses in Singapore and Hong Kong.
▪️Trident plans to buy $500 million worth of XRP.
▪️Shopify will start accepting USDC stablecoin payments by the end of 2025 — testing begins this June in the US and Europe on the Base blockchain.
▪️GameStop will raise $2.25 billion to buy BTC for its balance sheet.
▪️The Wall Street Journal reports Walmart and Amazon are also exploring launching their own stablecoins.
▪️Sharplink Gaming acquired 176,271 ETH worth $463 million — becoming the largest publicly traded Ethereum holder.