Telegram is renaming Toncoin to GRAM. Here is what the announcement leaves out.
On 1 June
https://t.me/durov: TON's native currency is becoming Gram, ticker TON to GRAM, step 4 of 7 of MTONGA. The network keeps the name TON, no swap, no migration, your balance is unchanged (10 TON becomes 10 GRAM), transition in about 3 weeks. He linked the new page, http://gram.org/. The same day the official Toncoin channel opened a one-week
https://t.me/toncoin, weighted by TON balances.
I traced this from public records a week before. The trademark, the shell and the lawyers were already on the record, and my findings are archived with dates before 1 June (links at the end). This is about the part the announcement does not mention: who assembled the name, and how.
8 Sep 2025: a BVI shell, Vernham Group Inc, bought the GRAM trademark from Lantah Co ( https://tsdr.uspto.gov/statusview/sn87810181). Three registries record it: USPTO, WIPO, Canada's CIPO. GRAM is the name Telegram chose for its 2018 token and https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91243046&pty=OPP. Same registration Vernham owns now. Canada's file even names Telegram as a past opponent.
Check: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/trademark/abstract?serialNumber=87810181, https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91243046&pty=OPP, https://tsdr.uspto.gov/statusview/sn87810181
Vernham's registered address is Commerce House, Wickhams Cay 1, Tortola, c/o the agent Conyers Trust. A https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1437596/dl gives the exact same address and agent as Telegram's. Same firms too: Conyers ran https://www.conyers.com/publications/view/telegram-group-us1-7-billion-bonds-issuance/ (Jun 2025), Skadden was its counsel in the 2018 GRAM case.
Check: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1437596/dl , https://www.conyers.com/publications/view/telegram-group-us1-7-billion-bonds-issuance/
Five overlaps, one direction: address, agent, offshore firm, coordinating firm, plus a UAE establishment in the same country as Telegram and TOP. My read: about 78% that Vernham sits inside the Telegram/TOP orbit. The announcement and the vote confirmed the rename, not the buyer. I cannot see the owner, the BVI hides it, so this is convergence, not proof.
http://ton.org/ is now run by the Telegram team (TON Tech, inside the TOP group): https://crt.sh/?q=ton.org on the domain, homepage rebuilt from Dec 2025.
https://t.me/durov: "Telegram replaces the TON Foundation." And a Foundation insider, Inal Kardan (its gaming lead, co-founder of the $40M TON Ventures fund), built a working http://ton.org/ preview with Toncoin renamed GRAM, "Everything runs on Gram," cert-dated 4 Apr 2026, about two months before the announcement. Honest limit: the cert dates the domain, the page was first archived 27 May, so "before step 1" is my inference, and it is his personal box, not official.
Check: https://crt.sh/?q=ton.org
The tell: a community token already named GRAM existed on TON. Weeks before the official rename, Durov personally messaged its creator and told him to drop the name. The creator said so and complied. Telegram filed zero formal IP complaints. Platforms do not clear a name for someone else.
Durov's own reason is mine: he says Gram was the currency's original name in the first white paper. I called the rebrand a week early; I had it as the finale (step 7), he placed it at step 4, right call, wrong step number. What he does not say is that the name was bought in 2025, by whom, through which lawyers.
Three myths, all false: "GRAM abandoned" - (live marks in US, UK, EU, CA, AU), "Lantah bankrupt" - (it won $625k off Telegram and sold the mark), "lifetime SEC ban on Gram" - (a Section 5 order plus a 3-year notice that expired in 2023). Check: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020-146.
What the announcement and vote confirmed: the rename. What they did not: who owns Vernham, or that Vernham is Telegram. That link is still about 78% in my read, circumstantial, not ownership. I am not telling you it is all proven. I am telling you the rename was on the public record before the announcement, I archived it before, and the announcement will not say who bought the name first.
Archived before 1 June: http://ton.kardan.ddns.net/ preview: http://web.archive.org/web/20260531145106/http://ton.kardan.ddns.net/ ; GRM (ex. GRAM) creator's post: http://archive.ph/WTNiF (
https://t.me/tonbase)
Full writeup, every source: https://open.substack.com/pub/rivol/p/telegram-is-renaming-toncoin-to-gram?r=8itywo&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=postviewer
Thread:
https://x.com/realRivol/status/2061520313712603407
Read the links, not me.
