AlphaTON: Tactical Brilliance or Bumbling?
January 6, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
A few days ago, I published on my “Telegram Notes” page a story about some fancy dancing. I thought the insights into strategic thinking and tactical moves might be of interest to those who follow Beyond Search and its information on social media like the estimable LinkedIn.
What caught my attention? Telegram — again. Pavel Durov is headed for a trial in France. He’s facing about a baker’s dozens of charges related to admirable activities like ignoring legitimate requests for information about terrorism, a little bit of kiddie video excitement, and the more mundane allegations related to financial fancy dancing.
This means that although other nation states could send a diplomatic note to the French government, that is unlikely. Thus, some casual conversations may be held, but the wheels of French justice which rolled like tumbrils during the French revolution, are grinding forward. The outcome is difficult to predict. If you have been in France, you know how some expected things become “quelle surprise.” And fast.
Not surprisingly, the activity related to Telegram has been stepped up. Nikolai Durov has apparently come out of his cocoon to allow Pavel, his GOAT and greatest of all time brother, to say:
It happened. Our decentralized confidential compute network, Cocoon, is live. The first AI requests from users are now being processed by Cocoon with 100% confidentiality. GPU owners are already earning TON.
Then a number of interesting things happened.
First, there was joy of Telegram true believers who wondered by the GOAT and his two Ph.D. toting brother were acting like Tim Apple and its non-AI initiative. Telegram was doing AI as a distributed service. Yep, AI mining along with other types of digital mining. Instead of buying scare and expensive hardware, Nikolai ideated a method that would use other people’s GPUs. Do some work for Telegram and get paid in TONcoin. Yep, that the currency completely and totally under the control of the independent TON Foundation. Yep, completely separate.
Second, there was some executive shuffling at the TON Foundation. You know that this outfit is totally, 100 percent separate from Telegram and now has responsibility for the so called TON blockchain technology and the marketing of all things Telegram. Manual (Manny) Stotz, a German financial wizard, left his job at the TON Foundation and became the president of TON Strategy Company. I think he convinced a person with a very low profile named Veronika Kapustina to help manage the new public company. TON Strategy has a tie up with Manny’s own Kingsway Capital and possibly with Manny’s other outfit Koenigsweg Holding. (Did you know that Koenigsweg means Kingsway in German?)
Is it possible for a pop up company to offer open market visitors an deal on hot TONcoins? I don’t know. I do know that Qwen did a good enough job on this illustration, however.
Third, was the beep beep Road Runner acceleration of AlphaTON Capital. Like TON Strategy Company (which rose like a phoenix from the smoking shell of VERB Technology), AlphaTON popped into existence about four months ago. Like TON Strategy, it sported a NASDAQ listing under the ticker symbol ATON. Some Russians might remember the famous or infamous ATON Bank affair. (I wonder if someone was genuinely clueless about the ATON ticker symbol’s metaphorical association or just having a bit of fun on the clueless, tightly leashed “senior managers” of AlphaTON. I thought I heard a hooray when AlphaTON was linked to the very interesting high frequency trading outfit DWF MaaS. No CFO or controller was needed when the company appeared like a pop up store in the Mall of America. A person with an interesting background would be in charge of AlphaTON’s money. For those eager to input one type of currency and trade it for another, the DWF MaaS outfit and its compatriots in Switzerland could do the job.
But what happened to these beep beep Road Runner moves?
Answer: TONcoin value went down. TON Strategy Company share price went down. AlphaTON share price cratered. On January 2, one AlphaTON share was about US$0.77. That is just a 85 percent drop since the pop distributed mining company came into existence by morphing from a cancer fighting company to an AI mining outfit.
In the midst of these financial flameouts, Manny had to do some fast dancing for the US SEC because he did not do the required shareholder vote process before making some money moves. Then, a couple of weeks later, the skilled senior managers of AlphaTON announced a deal with the high flying private company Anduril. But there was one small problem. Anduril came out and said, “AlphaTON is not telling the truth.” The blue chip thinkers at AlphaTON had to issue a statement to the effect that it was acting like an AI system and hallucinating. There was no deal with Anduril.
Then the big news was AlphaTON’s cutting ties with DWF MaaS, distancing itself from the innovative owner of DWF Maas, and paying DWF MaaS an alleged US$15 million to just go away pronto.
Where is AlphaTON now?
That’s a good question. I think 2026 will allow AlphaTON to demonstrate its business acumen. Personally I hope that information becomes available to answer these questions:
- Was AlphaTON’s capitalization at US$420.69 million a joke like ATON as the ticker symbol?
- What’s the linkage among RSV Capital (Canada) and sources of money in Russia and Telegram’s TONcoin (which is totally under the control of the completely separate TON Foundation)?
- What does Enzo Villani know about mining artificial intelligence?
- What does Britany Kaiser know about mining artificial intelligence?
- What does Logan Ryan Golema, an egamer, know about building out AI data centers?
- How does AlphaTON plan to link financial services, cancer fighting, and AI mining into a profitable business in 2026?
If you want to read the post in Telegram Notes, click here.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2026
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