A different publicly listed company is entering the digital asset treasury market, aiming to gain exposure to The Open Network’s native coin, even as the token’s value continues to decline.
In a Thursday announcement, AlphaTON, formerly known as Portage Biotech, revealed it has acquired $30 million worth of Toncoin (TON) tokens as part of its cryptocurrency accumulation strategy. The token has dropped approximately 13% over the past month.
With this acquisition, AlphaTON becomes the second digital asset treasury (DAT) focused on Toncoin, following TON Strategy Co., which rebranded from Verb Technology Company in August.
In a press release, the company stated its intent to grow its treasury to $100 million in TON by the end of 2025. At the time of writing, AlphaTON shares were down about 9.6% over the last 24 hours, according to Yahoo Finance.
The force behind this company’s initiative is Brittany Kaiser, a former board member of Bitcoin mining firm Gryphon Digital. According to a filing made in September with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has been involved in “researching and developing immune oncology treatments” since 2019.
The TON crypto treasury will be one of its “core business lines.”
The trend of public companies pivoting to become DATs has gained traction in 2025. Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, set the trend in 2020 when the company made its first Bitcoin (BTC) acquisition.
TON Strategy, the first company to focus on the TON treasury, began accumulating in August with a purchase of $713 million and now holds approximately 217.5 million tokens. Its stock has also struggled, declining over 65% in the past month.
Both firms follow a similar strategy of accumulating and staking TON, though AlphaTON focuses on ecosystem investment while TON Strategy promotes a no-leverage, long-term holding approach.
Cointelegraph reached out to TON Strategy Company for comments but had not received a reply by the time of publication.
Related: Telegram’s TON exclusivity ‘not a limitation but a necessity’
TON struggles to regain momentum despite support
The Open Network is a decentralized blockchain established by Telegram in 2018, which is now independently operated by the TON Foundation. This foundation promotes ecosystem development without controlling the network’s open-source technology.
On January 21, Telegram announced its decision to discontinue support for all other blockchains, making The Open Network the sole infrastructure for its Mini App ecosystem in partnership with the TON Foundation.
However, despite increasing network activity and over $400 million in investments from multiple venture capital firms in March, the price of TON has failed to bounce back.
The altcoin was trading at $2.75 at the time of writing, reflecting a 50% decline year-to-date and a more than 25% retracement in the previous six months, according to TradingView data.
In 2025, DATs have evolved beyond Bitcoin and Ether (ETH), with alternative coins such as Dogecoin (DOGE), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and other cryptocurrencies becoming reserve assets for publicly traded companies.
In recent weeks, however, Standard Chartered cautioned that many digital asset treasuries have seen their market net asset values (mNAVs) plummet, putting smaller companies at greater risk.
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