GRAM's $52 million unlock lands near a full day of TON trading

GRAM, previously called Toncoin, has a cliff unlock scheduled for today (September 22), amounting to about $52.68 million. The total amount of GRAM to be released is 36.58 million, which is about 1.3% of the circulating supply of the token.

Although the nominal value looks unimpressive due to the overall picture of the broader crypto market, it nevertheless comprises approximately 83% of the 24-hour trading volume of GRAM. 

Why the volume comparison beats the price tag

DeFiLlama has scheduled the release of the TON Believers Fund at 7:19 PM UTC on September 22, while Tonviewer indicates its next batch of releases in the amount of about 37 million GRAM on October 7, with the monthly allocations expected to last for three years.

The two trackers report the schedule of the event in a different way, with DeFiLlama citing September 22 as the date for the cliff unlock while Tonviewer cites October 7 as when the next payment is due. Because neither of them reconciles the two dates, best to view the September 22 possible date as the date set by DeFiLlama for its cliff unlock as opposed to a distribution date confirmed by Tonviewer.

The GRAM token price is $1.44, according to DeFiLlama. It also reports $63.27 million in traded volume in the last 24 hours and a market cap of $4.045 billion, suggesting that the amount of $52.68 million of unlocked tokens represents approximately 83% of the total volume traded in one day.

Such a volume of tokens unlocked is unusually high in light of the trading volume. A recent survey conducted by The Tie of over 12,000 unlocks found that the median unlock is equal to just 0.20% of the average daily volume of a token, whereas 95.6% of the events took place with lower trading volume for the day. The main conclusion derived from this research was that liquidity is more relevant than the dollar amount when analyzing unlocks’ capacity to affect the market.

What the renamed Toncoin actually is

On June 15, 2026, Toncoin was renamed into Gram, with a ticker called GRAM, following the approval by the community. The Open Network has retained the name TON for its blockchain. The official media account of TON explicitly differentiates Gram as the coin and TON as the blockchain itself. The overview about TON published by Messari includes information about the functions that the asset performs in the network including network fees, staking, and payments linked to Telegram.

The TON Believers Fund appears as an active locker on Tonviewer, which is storing close to 1.25 billion GRAMs at a value of approximately $1.82 billion based on the explorer’s price. It has reported 12 of the 36 distribution periods already completed, meaning that quite a significant amount of supply is still left in the pipeline.

The case that the move is already behind us

According to the Tokenomist investigation over 236 token unlock events, the vast majority of the downward movements occurred before the unlock date. The analysis noted that the pre-event movement was −14.7% relative to Bitcoin’s value. Of significance for GRAM is that it seems established tokens with higher liquidity do not show much of an unlocking effect regardless of the specifics of the control employed at the moment, with more vulnerability existing among early tokens possessing lower trading volume.

Where the data leans negative

Keyrock’s analysis of more than 16,000 unlock events found that 90% created negative price pressure and that price effects often began about 30 days before the event.

A 2026 study of 52 unlocked cryptocurrencies included on Binance similarly found that 88.5% (46) of the unlocks produced negative returns, with an average return of −16.97% within 72 hours. These results are correlational, meaning that they show what was happening around the time of the unlocks but not what the unlocks specifically caused.

Telegram’s billion-user wallet on the demand side

Demand could soften that supply pressure. Pavel Durov said in July that Telegram would embed a fee-free, non-custodial Gram wallet across its apps, potentially reaching more than 1 billion users. GRAM rose more than 8% after the announcement, according to Cryptopolitan.

Telegram has not explained how it would cover zero-fee transaction costs, so the demand effect remains prospective rather than proven.

A GRAM problem, not a market problem

CoinGecko puts the global crypto market cap at about $3.04 trillion. Against that backdrop, a $52.68 million GRAM release is too small to be a systemic event. The real test is narrower: whether GRAM’s liquidity can absorb the scheduled supply without a sharp local reaction, and whether any spillover reaches TON ecosystem tokens or nearby altcoin sentiment.

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