Gram Falls to $1.29 After Apple Removes Telegram From App Store

Crypto News

Gram (GRAM), formerly known as Toncoin and widely treated as the altcoin most directly tied to Telegram’s ecosystem, fell to a low near $1.29 after Apple temporarily removed Telegram from its App Store over prohibited child sexual exploitation material. Apple’s public statement confirmed that the removal followed the identification of CSAM content during app review, while Telegram said it deleted the offending post and banned the associated account before the app was restored within hours. Durov said Apple did not contact Telegram before taking down the app. The interruption blocked new iOS downloads and updates for a platform used by more than 1 billion people. Telegram spokesperson Remi Bon said one malicious user should not have disrupted communication for such a large user base, and the company’s official account questioned whether the same enforcement standard would be applied to other applications. Founder Pavel Durov later framed the incident as an attack rather than a simple moderation lapse. In his official post, he said attackers edited older public-group messages to insert AI-modified illegal images, hiding the changes from ordinary members and making rapid reporting difficult. Durov called the actors takedown extortionists who plant prohibited content, trigger store complaints and then demand payment from community operators. He criticized Apple for removing a service with more than 1 billion users without prior verification or notice. Telegram’s safety report said it has blocked 22,071,190 groups and channels this year for terms-of-service violations, using user reports, machine-learning monitoring and AI-based detection introduced in 2024. The disclosure also said Telegram has blocked 155,883 terrorism-related communities and removed more than 200 million pieces of terrorism-related content, including cooperation through the EU Internet Forum and Saudi Arabia’s ETIDAL. Apple previously removed Telegram in 2018 over similar concerns, and Durov remains subject to a French investigation opened in 2024 over alleged failures tied to illicit content.

Durov’s Aug. 5 explanation added a market-facing layer to the episode, particularly for GRAM. Market data show the token was trading around $1.40 before the removal became public, then dropped to a range between $1.29 and $1.32 as traders reassessed Telegram’s platform risk. The sell-off was brief. Once Telegram removed the flagged post, banned the account and Apple reinstated the application, GRAM recovered most of the decline and moved back toward the upper end of the $1.30 range. Durov said the attackers exploited post-editing in public groups, inserting AI-processed illegal images while concealing them from participants, then reported the content directly to Apple to evade normal moderation. He characterized Telegram’s ordinary public-group protections as effective, but described this episode as an exceptional case built on editing, concealment and direct reporting. The disappearance was global, leaving users in multiple regions unable to download Telegram from Apple’s marketplace while the dispute remained unresolved. He said extortionists routinely demand money from group administrators and threaten to plant content if payment is refused. The token’s rebrand from Toncoin to GRAM has not removed its association with Telegram’s corporate and regulatory trajectory. Durov warned that if an app used by more than 1 billion people can disappear from a major store without warning, every application hosting user-generated content faces similar exposure. Apple confirmed the CSAM rationale but had not commented on the extortion claim at the time. For holders, the episode showed that GRAM’s near-term risk is less like a protocol outage and more like a policy shock. The episode did not involve token issuance mechanics such as an airdrop, yet it moved price within hours. The automated abuse described by Durov also resembles malicious bot behavior rather than legitimate AI trading bot activity, and the rebound did not push GRAM anywhere near an all-time-high.

COINOTAG’s analysis is that the Telegram case turns app-store governance into a tradable risk premium for ecosystem-linked tokens. The primary sources—Apple’s public statement, Telegram’s official safety report and Durov’s own post—show how a single moderation decision can affect more than 1 billion users and quickly spill into GRAM pricing. That channel matters while sentiment is fragile. COINOTAG’s Fear and Greed Index is at 27, indicating Fear, Bitcoin accounts for 69.8% of the COINOTAG-tracked market, and the tracked market capitalization is $1,850,105,210,240. In this environment, policy enforcement and automated abuse can drive short-term flows as much as network fundamentals.