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Telegram Reaches 950 Million Users Amid Crypto Gaming Boom
The number of Telegram users around the world is growing, while interest in gaming on the platform is exploding. Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, announced The messaging platform reached 950 million monthly active users on Monday.
“Up from $900 million in the spring,” he wrote. “On track for $1 billion!”
The milestone was undoubtedly reached more quickly thanks to the immense interest in crypto games proliferating on Telegram and the rise of The Open Network (TON), which Telegram itself had originally founded before abandoning the project in 2020 among regulatory issues. Instead, a community of external developers gave life to the chain.
The recent rush for the game was started by Not moneya simple tap-to-earn game that gave players huge amounts of in-game coins, promising an on-chain reward on the horizon. Players joined in the millions, collecting virtual currency in the hopes of one day converting it into a real crypto token.
This happened in May, when Notcoin players could convert their earnings in NOT token on TON. Supported by major exchanges Binance and OKX, the NOT token airdrop immediately became the the largest gaming token launch of the year. TON now has a market cap of $17 billion, making it the tenth largest cryptocurrency by that measure.
But as Notcoin opened the door, Hamster Fight paved the way. With a similar tap-to-earn mechanic, paired with cute hamsters and a variety of ways to earn more and faster, the game became a global phenomenon. It hit 100 million users in June, and even attracted the attention of the Iranian government, which feared that his popularity among citizens could distract them from their presidential election.
Earlier this month, Durov said that Hamster Kombat had attracted 239 million usersdescribing the game as “the fastest growing digital service in the world.” Since then, Hamster Kombat says it has surpassed the 250 million player milestone.
Many other games followed, including Yes-coin, TapSwap, Cattizene, PixelTap, Coin WAND Musk EmpireSome of these games have even started to collaborate Togetherwith PixelTap and Musk Empire offering benefits to Notcoin holders.
Like Notcoin, Hamster Kombat has announced that it will launch your own token on TONAND PixelTap token is already active on Ethereum ahead of planned expansion to TON.
And while Telegram works effectively delivered TON to the community in 2020 as a company subjected to examination from government regulators, the popular messaging app has since reinstated the network in a number of ways, including share advertising revenue with Telegram channel owners.