Inventory of 10 TON investment institutions: financing scale, investment cost, return on investment

Original author: Nancy, PANews

After years of ups and downs, TON has now entered the top ten in the crypto market capitalization, with a strong user base, substantial funding, and a soaring token price, making it one of the more robust encryption projects in this bull run.

TON’s transformation behind the realization of the “thousand-mile horse” is inseparable from the discerning eye of “Bole”. According to CoinCarp data, TON has completed seven rounds of financing so far, but only two rounds of $16 million investments have been publicly disclosed, and no more information has been disclosed about the remaining five rounds. Among the 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 fewer top-tier encryption VC; in terms of the announced financing time, TON, established in 2018, received its earliest investment in 2021, and the year with the most rounds of financing is 2023, with a total of three rounds of financing.

This article by PANews summarizes the financing scale, investment cost, and return on investment of 10 TON investment institutions that have disclosed information. The scale of investment of these VCs varies from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, with the lowest position-building cost being less than 0.78 US dollars, and the highest return rate may exceed 14 times.

Runa Capital and RTP Global

Runa Capital is a $270 million technology-focused venture capital firm, focusing on fintech, education, digital healthcare, etc., with its portfolio of invested or incubated companies exceeding $10 billion. TON is the only blockchain company that has received funding directly from Runa Capital since its inception. RTP Global, which focuses on early-stage tech companies, is one of the first companies to provide financial and expert support to major European tech companies such as Yandex and Delivery Hero. Its portfolio includes 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 Alexander Filatov, co-founder of TON Labs, this financing was completed in 2022, and it also means that the investment of these two institutions was lower than the online price of $0.78 in August 2021, with a return on investment of over 9.9 times.

Pantera Capital

In May 2024, Pantera Capital, a crypto venture capital firm managing over $5 billion in assets, announced its investment in TON, the largest investment in the fund’s history. It expressed belief that TON has the ability to promote cryptocurrencies to the public because it has been widely used in the Telegram network, and further explained the reason for heavily positioning TON. Although Pantera Capital did not disclose the specific amount or the discounted purchase price, based on its previous disclosure of purchasing up to $250 million discounted SOL tokens from FTX Estate, the institution’s investment in TON is expected to exceed this amount.

And at the end of June, Pantera Capital’s email to potential investors also showed that the institution is 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 be first raised in the first quarter of 2025, with a target of $1 billion.

Kingsway Capital

Kingsway Capital’s founder and CEO Manuel Stotz is a board member of the TON Foundation. According to The Block, Kingsway Capital’s largest token holding to date is also TON, which it began buying over two years ago. Based on the price trend of TON between July 2021 and July 2022, Kingsway Capital’s cost of building a position is at most $4.5 and at least about $0.55. According to CoinGecko data as of July 1st, the price of TON is $7.71, which means Kingsway Capital’s return is between 1.7 and 14 times.

Ryze Labs

Ryze Labs, founded in 2015, was formerly known as Sino Global Capital. Its investment portfolio includes Solana, LayerZero, Polygon, Wintermute, and more. In 2021, Ryze Labs launched a $200 million fund, with bankrupt FTX as its major investor. Ian Wittkopp, head of TON Foundation, was formerly the COO and investment director of Sino Global Capital.

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

Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands announced in November 2023 that it would strategically invest in the TON ecosystem and become the largest validator of the TON blockchain, providing funding, research, and analytics platform for third-party TON ecosystem mini-applications.

Animoca Brands co-founder and chairman Yat Siu revealed in an interview with The Block that when the price of TON tokens fell below 1 US dollar, the company began to purchase, and then continued to buy at prices of 1 US dollar, 1.5 US dollars, and 2 US dollars. According to the price trend on CoinGecko, excluding early participation, Animoca Brands built positions between March 2022 and December 2022, as well as between May 2023 and September 2023, with current returns ranging from 3.85 to 7.7 times.

Mirana Ventures

In March 2024, Mirana Ventures announced a new long-term partnership with TON, including an $8 million purchase of TON on the Secondary Market. At that time, the price of TON was less than $2.7, with a return rate of over 2.8x as of July 1, 2024.

DWF Labs

In November 2022, DWF Labs announced a commitment to allocate $10 million to support the TON ecosystem, with plans to make a total of 50 seed investments over the next 12 months. According to CoinGecko, the price of TON during November 2022 to November 2023 is approximately between $1.68 to $2.54, which would result in a return of over 3 to 4.5 times based on the current price (July 1st). This year, TON also announced a partnership with DWF Labs and is seeking project partners and investors to develop games and SocialFi mini-applications 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. In the staking plan launched by Mask Network this year, TON tokens are also included in the rewards.

Mexc Ventures

Mexc Ventures announced in October 2023 that it had made an eight-figure investment in TON, but did not disclose the specific amount. Based on the market price of $2 at that time, Mexc Ventures’ return was approximately 3.8 times.

It is important to note that in the field of encryption, VC often has a certain lock-up period, and adopts linear unlocking, rather than a one-time dump.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that TON previously raised $1.7 billion through multiple rounds of IC0, with prices ranging from $0.37 to $1.33. According to a list submitted to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by the SEC, investors include Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Norma Investments Limited fund, which invested $10 million, Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev’s investment division Larnabel Ventures, which invested $15 million, Abyzov’s fund Batios Holdings Limited, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and Sergey Solonin, co-founder of Russian payment giant Qiwi, among others.

However, due to the SEC lawsuit, TON announced in 2020 that the launch of its Mainnet would be delayed until April 2022. It also stated that if investors disagreed, Telegram would return 72% of the investment, or investors could lend the investment to Telegram as a loan and receive 110% of their original investment before April 30, 2021. If investors choose to retain their investment, the current return rate is nearly 5.8 to 20.8 times.

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