Telegram's Kremlin-Approved Plan to Break the Apple-Google-Meta Monopoly Runs Through Wall Street | Disruption Banking
Skip to content
Facebook-f
X-twitter
Markets by Trading view
","library":"fa-solid"},"toggle":"burger"}" data-widget_type="nav-menu.default">
Search
Telegram’s Kremlin-Approved Plan to Break the Apple-Google-Meta Monopoly Runs Through Wall Street
Tim Tolka
June 5, 2026
A sprawling Russian-financed business network associated with Telegram has gained access to the US financial system. The network brings Telegram together with The Open Network , or TON, reverse-merger Nasdaq vehicles, AI compute infrastructure, and Moscow-linked crypto operators, despite the SEC having previously blocked Telegram’s original TON fundraising effort and forced the return of $1.2 billion to investors.<br>At the tip of the spear is AlphaTON Capital (Nasdaq: ATON), a crypto treasury firm based in the British Virgin Islands, recently rebranded as Alpha Compute (Nasdaq: ALP), an AI company, in the business of “confidential compute.” Telegram positions itself as a privacy-focused alternative to the Apple-Google-Meta ecosystem. Telegram has users, over 1 billion strong, only half as many as WhatsApp, which it aims to overtake. TON provides the BlockchainBlockchain can make immediate digitally signed transfers of anything virtual or web-based with no substantial running costs once applications are created – contracts, money, agreements, virtual services and anything like this. Otherwise known as distributed ledger technology." href="https://www.disruptionbanking.com/Fintech Glossary/blockchain/" data-gt-translate-attributes='[{"attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"}]' tabindex='0' role='link'>blockchain rails and the tokens. Alpha Compute provides secure AI infrastructure.<br>Pavel’s Quest: The Architecture of Access<br>What began as a failed crypto fundraising scheme has evolved into a far more opaque structure spanning the U.S., Canada, Switzerland, and the UAE, where shell companies, market makers, and AI narratives are being used to repackage TON-linked exposure for Western capital markets.<br>In late April, Pavel Durov announced Telegram would take back control of the TON Foundation , ostensibly a Swiss nonprofit, deeply tied to the Telegram and TON ecosystem. This raised eyebrows among those in the know because Telegram was ostensibly separate from the TON Foundation, which was created in the wake of the case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Telegram in 2019.<br>Since then, Telegram’s leadership, even with Pavel Durov under indictment in France, has used shell flips and shelf companies to launch on Nasdaq. Durov wants to take down the Apple-Google-Meta monopoly and replace it with his alternative. Key to this grand quest is access to the U.S. financial system.<br>Durov’s Declaration of War on Big Tech<br>Last year, Durov declared on his Telegram channel, “Ahead of us stands WhatsApp — a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram. For years, they’ve desperately tried to copy our innovations while burning billions on lobbying and PR campaigns to slow us down. They failed. Telegram grew, became profitable, and —unlike our competitor — retained its independence.”<br>The claim that Telegram has retained its independence is suspect because Telegram is a vehicle of Russian state propaganda. Almost all the state agencies have Telegram channels, as do politicians and media outlets. Roskomnadzor , Russia’s online censor, has blocked or throttled Telegram a few times over the years, and there are rumors that Durov made a deal with the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service .<br>Kremlin watchers will recognize Moscow’s Protean hand, reaching through the penumbra of global financial plumbing in search of capital and assets, channeling influence and making use of light-touch jurisdictions and a rotating roster of characters raised in post-Soviet republics and educated in elite Russian institutions.<br>Several of the leading lights went to the Skolkovo Innovation Center , Russia’s version of Silicon Valley, in the Mozhaysky District of Moscow. Now, they run companies like Red Shark Ventures , TON Strategy Company , the TON Foundation, and DWF Labs, as well as DWF MaaS . What these companies have in common is an association with Russian finance and Telegram.<br>The Skolkovo Circle<br>The “red shark” behind AlphaTON is Yury Mitin , Chief Business Development Officer of AlphaTON and founder of Red Shark Ventures. Mitin acknowledged in an interview that ATON’s price per share was “destroyed,” describing the action as “pop, blast to the moon, then minus 70% when registration of shares comes.” AlphaTON used the ticker ATON, formerly associated with a moribund biotech company called Portage , with which AlphaTON completed a reverse merger. ATON is also a well-known Russian bank, another vestige they would likely prefer to shed. Now, as Alpha Compute, the entity has switched to ALP,...