After Pavel Durov announced that Toncoin would return to its original name, Gram. TON price jumped 19% within hours, and trading volume nearly tripled.
We looked at our own data over the same months. Our goal was to see whether price action matches actual retail demand.
Major events in a coin's history are often accompanied by a lot of loud headlines and social media hype. Does this buzz reflect the real demand for an asset? Let’s find out together.
TON to GRAM: A Quick Recap
On June 1, 2026, Pavel Durov announced that Toncoin would go back to Gram, the name from Telegram's original 2018 whitepaper. It wasn’t anything major, just a name change.
Here’s a timeline of what happened:
- June 1, 2026: Renaming announcement. TON price jumped as much as 19% within hours after
- June 8, 2026: community vote with 81.22% approval
- June 15, 2026: rebrand went live
For a full breakdown of what changed (and what didn't) between TON, Toncoin, and GRAM, check → TON vs GRAM vs Toncoin: Same, But Different, But Same?
For this piece, we're focused on one specific question: what happened to demand.
TON Demand, Before and After the Rebrand
We pulled our own exchange data on the transaction volume for April, May, and June 2026 - the three months around the announcement.
In May, even before the rebrand was announced, demand grew 31%. In June, the very month when the announcement, vote, and rollout took place, demand dropped 57% from May's level.
Source: ChangeNOW exchange data, % change vs. previous month
Data from the ChangeNOW support team illustrates our take on the hype. Between May and June, inquiries about "GRAM" jumped by over 1,260%, and "TON" mentions grew by 71%.
And they weren't just asking us. Over on Google Trends, searches for "ton rebrand" saw a massive >5,000% breakout spike during the exact same period.
Source: Google Trends
People sure were asking more questions about the token. However, as our transaction volume stats show, they weren't rushing in to act.
Where Price & Demand Misalign
Price and demand told two different stories about the same month.
Within hours of the announcement on June 1, TON's price jumped 19%, but… rolled back quickly to the starting point by June 5.
Source: LunarCrush
Speculative capital was just trading the headline hoping to get some quick profits while the hype lasted.
Over on Coinalyze, you can see open interest hit $82.1 million right on June 1.
Source: Coinalyze
Traders jumped in with huge leverage at the ready when they heard the news, and then dumped their positions just as fast.
Open interest crashed over the next few days as traders moved on to the next piece of news.
Meanwhile, regular users didn't really react. If you look at TonStat, the actual blockchain barely noticed the announcement. Well, it did, but the enthusiasm was pretty mild.
Source: TonStat
The network processed about 4.2 million transactions on June 1. No breakouts, nothing sensational, just an average day for TON. In fact, it was noticeably lower than the busy days the network saw back in May.
Conclusion: What the Data Shows
Don’t trust the hype. Media hype is a spell, a magical veil that conceals the truth.
And the truth here is that regular retail users simply didn't know what to actually do with this rebranding thing.
The curiosity was definitely there. You can see it in the flood of our support tickets and 5,000% spike in Google searches. People wanted to figure out what was going on, but they lacked the understanding of what to make of that info.
With that being said, curiosity ≠ demand.
If there are other assets you have a much clearer vision for, ChangeNOW is here to provide the best rates and a seamless swapping experience.
Next read: Lean Ethereum: Everything You Need to Know
