China Strikes Hard! TON Integrates USDT Stablecoin, Apple's App Store in China Pulls Telegram, Reuters: China Increasingly Intolerant

Tether, the issuer of the world's largest US dollar stablecoin USDT, announced last week the integration into Telegram-developed The Open Network (TON) blockchain, enabling users to send USDT directly to each other via Telegram. Over the weekend, Apple's App Store in China announced the removal of the Telegram app. Reuters reports that China is increasingly intolerant of foreign online messaging services outside its control.

Paulo Ardoino, Tether's CEO, and Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, jointly announced that USDT would be launched on TON, introducing peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin payments to Telegram for the first time.

Ardoino stated, "We are excited to bring USDT to the open TON as we support its vision of an open, decentralized internet and a borderless financial system."

In the announcement, the TON Foundation mentioned, "This move supports TON's mission to put cryptocurrencies in every pocket and integrate backend Web 3.0 services into the daily lives of Telegram users."

Following this, the Apple App Store in China delisted the Telegram app, with Reuters noting China's growing intolerance toward uncontrolled foreign online messaging services.

Cryptocurrency media CCN reported that USDT, unlike Bitcoin, cannot resist censorship.

Tether can always freeze assets and has done so multiple times at government requests. However, stablecoins have already been banned in China. Therefore, the government has almost no influence over the companies issuing these coins. For those in China looking to bypass restrictions, it undoubtedly serves as a powerful tool.

Despite China joining the growing list of countries trying to restrict Telegram, the platform continues to add new features, such as integrating USDT for peer-to-peer payments, enabling users to evade censorship.

The article mentions that the move to restrict access to Telegram and other messaging services marks the latest chapter in China's ongoing war against foreign-operated messaging apps.

China first blocked the Telegram web app in 2015 when the state-run People's Daily reported that human rights lawyers used the platform to organize attacks against the government.

Since then, Telegram has remained a key tool for dissidents seeking to bypass state surveillance. To date, Chinese iPhone users can still access the platform via VPNs.

Telegram has long touted its end-to-end encryption as a key privacy tool, claiming that no government can access messages through backdoors. Thus, it has become the bane of several countries, including Iran, North Korea, and Russia, though policies in these countries have subsequently changed.

In contrast, China's most popular messaging platform, WeChat, is closely integrated with the country's state surveillance apparatus.

This may explain why other apps not known for opposing the government have also been removed from app stores. Although Telegram may pose the biggest threat to China's censorship regime, the overall strategy is to limit access to any social media that it cannot effectively monitor and control.

However, decentralized blockchain networks like Bitcoin and TON pose a direct challenge to this state control.

Resisting censorship arguably remains one of the most significant benefits of decentralization, but text-based communications are not the only things that can be censored.

For instance, Bitcoin was founded on the simple principle of creating a peer-to-peer payment network that bypasses banks and other centralized intermediaries.

Fifteen years later, many subsequent blockchains, including TON related to Telegram, have maintained the same promise: to resist censorship through decentralization.

Using this platform, Telegram users can easily send cryptocurrencies to each other without worrying about transaction blocks. However, until now, TON's functionality as a payment platform was limited to the blockchain's native asset, Toncoin.

CCN emphasized, "Ultimately, centralized entities are always the weak link in circumventing China's surveillance and censorship. The state may not be able to stop people from using cryptocurrencies, but it can strike at the exchanges they use to purchase them. Those who wish will find ways to continue using Telegram, but its usability will undoubtedly decline without support from the Apple App Store."