The ecosystem of Toncoin (TON), which has the potential to reach over one billion users through Telegram, experienced a rather sluggish 2025, with the price of TON dropping by 65% from its peak earlier in the year.
However, several positive signs began to emerge in late December, which may form the basis for expectations regarding the recovery of TON in the first quarter of 2026.
Trading volumes and network activity are improving.
First, the daily trading volume of TON has rapidly increased.
According to data from Tonscan in the third week of December 2025, the daily trading volume of TON has surpassed 154 million USD, an increase of over 41.7%.
This marks the highest trading volume level for December, while the surge indicates the return of vibrant trading after previously being slowed down by negative sentiment in the altcoin market.
TON has managed to stay above the 1.4 USD level in recent days as volumes increased and the rate of price adjustments slowed down, signaling a renewed buying interest.
Another important signal is TON's return to trending on CoinGecko, reflecting increased interest in searches and trading demand for TON in December, and it also explains the recent increase in trading volume.
On-chain data also adds positive confidence.
Although the daily active users (DAU) of TON have significantly decreased compared to 2024, this decline seems to have stabilized. Previously, user activity had soared to peak levels due to the airdrop and GameFi campaigns.
Data shows that over the past three months, the number of daily users increased from 70,000 to nearly 100,000, while during the same period, the price of TON dropped from 3 USD to 1.4 USD. This divergence reflects returning confidence and may indicate that investors view TON as still undervalued.
What will TON be like in 2026?
At the Blockchain Life 2025 event in October, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, emphasized Telegram's intention to play a larger role in the development of the core technology of TON in 2026
In December, Durov announced the official launch of Cocoon, a decentralized and secure computing network. Many GPU owners have started receiving TON by sharing their processing power with this network.
Investors believe that Pavel Durov and Telegram will continue to expand efforts to push TON to reach users potentially up to one billion per month.
In 2026, Telegram will intensify its development of TON as mentioned by Pavel Durov. We should also expect the company to make several significant announcements. Hopefully, 2026 will be a bullish year for the TON ecosystem – investor Mr. Satoshik has predicted.
Additionally, there is another important step; recently Kraken announced support for the xStocks platform
This system integration allows Telegram users to buy, hold, and transfer tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs directly through TON Wallet.
After initiating token equity on Solana, we expanded to EVM through Ethereum. We have stepped into TON with this strategic move, bringing a successful solution that over 50,000 users chose, transferring a total value of over 13 billion USD in CEX + DEX to the Telegram blockchain, and xStocks has announced.
These developments are considered positive signs for investors anticipating the recovery of TON. However, identifying the bottom price of TON remains challenging due to conflicting macro signals continuously pressuring the overall altcoin market.
