Original author: Nancy, PANews

After years of ups and downs and twists and turns, TON has now ranked among the top ten cryptocurrencies in terms of market value. The rapid growth in user base, capital scale and token prices has made it one of the crypto projects with the strongest development momentum in this bull market.

TON’s transformation into a “thousand-mile horse” is inseparable from the wisdom of “Bo Le”. According to CoinCarp data, TON has completed seven rounds of financing so far, but only publicly disclosed two rounds of investment of US$16 million, and no more information was released for the remaining five rounds. Among them, from the perspective of investment institutions, participating institutions include Runa Capital, RTP Global, DWF Labs, Mask Network, Mexc Ventures, Animoca Brands, Mirana Ventures and Pantera Capital. Compared with other public chain projects, TON has more Web2 participating institutions and relatively few head crypto VCs; from the official announcement of financing time, TON, which was founded in 2018, was first invested in 2021, and the year with the most financing was 2023, with a total of 3 rounds of financing.

In this article, PANews takes stock of the financing scale, investment cost and investment return rate of 10 TON investment institutions that have disclosed information. The investment scale of these VCs ranges from hundreds of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. The lowest cost of building a position is less than US$0.78, and the highest rate of return may exceed 14 times.

Runa Capital and RTP Global

Runa Capital is a $270 million technology-focused venture capital firm that focuses on fintech, education, digital healthcare, etc., with assets of over $10 billion in companies it has invested in or incubated. TON is the only blockchain company that has received direct funding from Runa Capital since its founding. RTP Global, which focuses on early-stage technology companies, was one of the first companies to provide financial and expert support to major European technology companies such as Yandex and Delivery Hero, with a portfolio of 183 companies, including 15 unicorns.

In April 2021, TON announced a $6 million seed round of financing, led by RTP Global and Runa Capital. According to TON Labs co-founder Alexander Filatov, the financing was completed in 2022, which also means that the investment institutions of these two institutions are lower than the launch price of $0.78 in August 2021, and the return on investment exceeds 9.9 times.

Pantera Capital

In May 2024, Pantera Capital, a crypto venture capital firm that manages more than $5 billion in assets, announced an investment in TON, the largest investment in the fund's history. It said, "I believe TON has the ability to promote cryptocurrency to the public because it is widely used in the Telegram network," and further explained the reason for its heavy position in TON. Although Pantera Capital did not disclose the specific amount and the price discount it purchased, it was previously revealed that it had purchased up to $250 million in discounted SOL tokens from FTX Estate, indicating that the institution will invest more than this amount in TON.

At the end of June, an email sent by Pantera Capital to potential investors also showed that the agency was raising a new fund to purchase more TON tokens, with a minimum investment of $250,000 per supporter. According to Pantera Capital, Pantera Fund V will raise its first fund in the first quarter of 2025 with a target of $1 billion.

Kingsway Capital

Manuel Stotz, founder and CEO of Kingsway Capital, is a member of the board of directors of the TON Foundation. The Block reported that Kingsway Capital's largest token holding to date is also TON, which it has started purchasing for more than two years. Judging from the price trend of TON between July 2021 and July 2022, Kingsway Capital's position building cost did not exceed $4.5 at most and was as low as about $0.55. According to Coingecko data, as of July 1, the price of TON was $7.71, which means that Kingsway Capital's return rate may be between 1.7 times and 14 times.

Ryze Labs

Founded in 2015, Ryze Labs was formerly known as Sino Global Capital, with an investment portfolio including Solana, LayerZero, Polygon and Wintermute. Ryze Labs launched a $200 million fund in 2021, with the bankrupt FTX as its main investor. Ian Wittkopp, head of the TON Foundation, was the former COO and investment director of Sino Global Capital.

In a report by The Block, Ryze Labs founding and managing partner Matthew Graham revealed that Ryze has been a "big buyer" of TON tokens.

Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands announced a strategic investment in the TON ecosystem in November 2023 and became the largest validator of the TON blockchain, providing funding, research and analysis platforms for third-party TON ecosystem mini-applications.

Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu revealed in an interview with The Block that the company began buying TON tokens when the price was below $1, and then continued to buy at $1, $1.5 and $2. According to the price trend of CoinGecko, excluding early participation, Animoca Brands may have built positions from March to December 2022 and from May to September 2023, and now the return rate is between 3.85 times and 7.7 times.

Mirana Ventures

In March 2024, Mirana Ventures announced a new long-term partnership with TON, which included the purchase of TON for $8 million on the secondary market. At that time, the price of TON was less than $2.7, and the return rate as of July 1, 2024 was over 2.8 times.

DWF Labs

In November 2022, DWF Labs announced a commitment of $10 million to support the TON ecosystem, and plans to make a total of 50 seed investments in the next 12 months. According to the CoinGecko price, TON's price from November 2022 to November 2023 was approximately between $1.68 and $2.54, and the return rate was more than 3 to 4.5 times based on the current price (July 1). This year, TON also announced a partnership with DWF Labs and is looking for project partners and investors to develop games and SocialFi mini-apps on the TON blockchain.

Mask Network

Mask Network announced its investment in TON in May 2023, but did not disclose the amount. Based on the price of about $2 at the time, Mask Network's return rate exceeded 3.8 times. Mask Network also included TON tokens in the staking plan launched this year.

Mexc Ventures

Mexc Ventures announced an eight-figure investment in TON in October 2023, but did not disclose the exact amount. Based on the market price of $2 at the time, Mexc Ventures' return rate was about 3.8 times.

It should be noted that in the crypto space, VCs often have a lock-up period of a certain period of time, and unlock their positions linearly rather than selling off all at once.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that TON previously obtained $1.7 billion in financing through multiple rounds of IC0, with prices ranging from $0.37 to $1.33. A list submitted by the SEC to the U.S. District Court in New York shows that investors include Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich's Norma Investments Limited fund, which invested $10 million, Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev and his family's investment department Larnabel Ventures, which invested $15 million, former Russian cabinet minister Abyzov's fund Batios Holdings Limited, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs, and Ross payment giant Qiwi co-founder Sergey Solonin, etc.

However, due to the SEC's lawsuit, TON also announced in 2020 that its mainnet launch time would be postponed to April 2022. If investors disagree, Telegram will return 72% of the investment amount, or investors can lend their investment to Telegram as a loan and receive 110% of their original investment before April 30, 2021. If investors choose to keep their investment amount, the current rate of return is nearly 5.8 times to 20.8 times.

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