Toncoin (TON), the own coin of The Open Network blockchain, faced a surge in the number of futures traders hedging their spot positions after the arrest of Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram.

On August 24, Durov was arrested when his plane landed at Bourget airport near Paris. He is allegedly charged with terrorism, human trafficking, collusion, fraud, money laundering and much more.

Just a few hours after the appearance of the reports, open interest in Toncoin increased by 32% to $303.09 million, according to CoinGlass. A crowd of traders appeared after a sharp drop in the TON price.

500 $WILD The Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain was launched by Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai back in 2018, but two years later they were forced to abandon the project due to litigation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2019, the SEC sued Telegram for raising $1.7 billion in an initial coin offering (ICO) using the Gram token, which the regulator called an unregistered security. Durov then made a deal with the SEC, returned unused investor funds and paid a fine of $18.5 million.