Gram (GRAM): the slide to $1.16 came from spot trading, not leverage

The price of Gram stands at $1.25 on Monday morning. That is 7.2 percent below the level of a week ago, and almost all of the move happened on a single day: on October 23 GRAM fell from $1.33 to $1.157 during trading before steadying at $1.22. The obvious explanation is that leveraged positions were force-closed in sequence and dragged the price down with them.

Only half of that is supported by the data. Our own analysis of trading data from the exchange WhiteBIT shows that on exactly that day the spot market carried more turnover than the futures market — even though the reverse was true on six of the nine days examined. Our assessment follows further down; the numbers come first.

What happened to the Gram price on October 23

GRAM opened October 23 at $1.315 and reached $1.33 in early trading. From there it fell without any meaningful bounce to $1.157, the lowest level since early August. At the daily close the price stood at $1.221, 7.2 percent below the previous close. Thirteen percent separated the day's high from the day's low.

Turnover tells the same story in different words. Between October 17 and October 22, GRAM spot pairs changed hands at between $2.1 million and $3.1 million a day. On October 23 the figure was $3.6 million, on October 24 it was $4.1 million. The price did not fall into a thin market, then, but against markedly increased supply.

Conditions have calmed since. GRAM closed at $1.262 on October 24 and at $1.257 on October 25, and since the start of the new week the price has moved in a narrow band between $1.23 and $1.27. Market capitalisation stands at $3.55 billion according to CoinGecko, with 24-hour trading volume of $26.2 million, as of 2am on Monday. GRAM therefore ranks 31st among cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.

Perpetuals versus spot: where Gram turnover actually sits

A perpetual, or perp, is a futures contract with no expiry date: you trade the price movement of a coin without owning it, and you post only a fraction of the position value as margin. That leverage is exactly what makes it attractive to speculators and dangerous for the price, because a trader who fails to top up the margin has the position closed automatically.

For this article we analysed daily trading data from five GRAM markets on the exchange WhiteBIT: the four spot pairs against USDT, USDC, the euro and WBT, plus the perpetual against USDT. The period covers the nine trading days from October 17 to October 25, 2026. Cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 26, 2026.

The result across the whole period: the perpetual accounted for $32.9 million of turnover, all spot pairs together for $26.1 million. The leveraged market thus traded 26 percent more than the cash market. The perpetual led on six of the nine days, most clearly on October 17 at double the spot turnover.

The spot low sat below the perpetual low

The exceptions to that pattern are October 23 and October 24 — precisely the two days of the sell-off. On October 23, $3.6 million of spot turnover stood against $3.2 million in the perpetual; on October 24 the figures were $4.1 million against $3.5 million. In the week GRAM fell hardest, the usual relationship inverted.

A second measure points the same way. The daily low in the GRAM/USDT spot pair on October 23 was $1.157; the low in the perpetual on the same day was $1.175. The cash market therefore fell roughly 1.5 percent further than the futures market. Had a liquidation cascade driven the move, the opposite would have been expected: forced closures originate in the futures market and pull the spot price down only afterwards.

Both figures come from a single exchange and do not describe the global market. CoinGecko lists Binance as the largest venue for GRAM, with around $6 million in daily turnover. What the numbers show is therefore a slice of the market — though a large one, and one nobody else has assembled this way.

Open interest and funding rate: where leverage stands now

For the days ahead, what happened on October 23 matters less than how much leverage currently sits in the market. Two figures answer that. The first is open interest, the sum of all outstanding futures positions. In the GRAM perpetual it stands at 4.62 million GRAM, or roughly $5.8 million at the current price.

The second is the funding rate. This rate is the balancing payment that flows between buyers and sellers every few hours and keeps the futures price tied to the cash price. When it is positive, buyers pay, which points to a surplus of long positions. For GRAM it stands at 0.005 percent, marginally in positive territory. By way of comparison, the exchange permits values of up to 2 percent in either direction.

Taken together, the two describe a market with no striking imbalance. Long positions outnumber short ones, but the skew is small, and open interest amounts to a tiny fraction of market capitalisation. Traders waiting for a second cascade will find no support for it in these figures.

From Toncoin to Gram: the ticker change and the Telegram wallet

Anyone looking for GRAM in a portfolio and failing to find it may simply be stuck on the old name. The coin was called Toncoin until the summer of 2026 and was renamed Gram after a community vote — back to the name under which Telegram had originally planned the project. The blockchain itself is still called The Open Network, or TON. We set out what the change means for holders in a separate piece on the renaming; no swap was required.

The second strand is the wallet inside Telegram. In early October the messenger opened its wallet to a larger share of its user base, which gave the price a lift at the time. The more important question is what that means for custody of your own coins: a wallet inside an app where a company manages the keys is, legally and practically, a different thing from a wallet whose recovery phrase only you know.

Levels above and below: $1.16 to $1.37

The trading data of the past nine days produce three reference points on the upside. The first sits at $1.28, the high of the past 24 hours. Above it comes the round number of $1.30, last touched on October 22. The weekly high from October 17 stands at $1.373; GRAM is currently 9 percent away from it.

There are three on the downside as well. The October 24 low sits at $1.204, beneath it the round $1.20 level, and only then the weekly low of $1.157 from the sell-off. These points are observations from the chart, not price targets and not a recommendation.

The Fed decision on October 28 is the next date in the diary

The only firmly scheduled event this week comes not from the TON ecosystem but from Washington. The Federal Open Market Committee meets on October 27 and 28 according to the official Federal Reserve meeting calendar; the decision is published on Wednesday. Since the clocks went back last weekend, it falls in the early evening for European readers.

For smaller coins such as GRAM, a date of that kind is above all a volatility risk. Such coins generally move with the broader market, and with a wider swing. Holding a leveraged position through Wednesday therefore means reckoning with a broader range than in the quiet days before it.

Leverage and liquidation: how a cascade forms

Even though the numbers for October 23 argue against a cascade, the mechanism is worth knowing, because it applies to every sharper setback. A liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position once the margin posted no longer covers the loss. The exchange then sells the position into the market, whatever the price.

A cascade forms when those sales push the price to the level at which the next group of positions falls due. Each wave generates the next, until either enough buyers step in or no leveraged positions remain. What separates it from an ordinary sell-off is speed: cascades play out in minutes, not hours.

Our assessment: on the available data, the move of October 23 was a sell-off on the cash market and not a cascade. Two measured values support that reading — the higher spot turnover on both down days and the spot low that sat 1.5 percent below the futures low. Against it stands the fact that our survey covers only one exchange, and liquidations may have taken place on venues we cannot see. For holders the distinction still matters a great deal: a cascade is often followed by a rapid bounce, because the selling pressure was technically forced. After a sell-off on the cash market that tailwind is missing, and the price needs fresh demand. The course so far shows exactly that: GRAM has recovered a good half of the day's loss since October 23 and has been flat ever since.

Buying route, custody and the holding period for investors in Germany

Purchases have been governed by the EU's MiCA regulation since the transition period expired last year. Providers targeting retail clients in Germany need authorisation as a crypto service provider, granted either by BaFin or by another European supervisor with passporting into the EU. Which venues hold that authorisation and what they charge is set out in our crypto exchange comparison.

On custody there are two routes to choose between. Leaving GRAM on the exchange means carrying its counterparty risk but no administrative effort. Moving the coins into your own wallet puts responsibility for the recovery phrase on you. For amounts beyond play money, the second route is the safer one.

For tax, the same rules apply to GRAM as to other cryptocurrencies held privately: a sale within one year of purchase is a private disposal, and gains from it are taxable to the extent that, together with other such transactions, they exceed the exemption threshold. After a year has passed, the sale is tax-free. None of that applies to leveraged positions; gains from those fall under the capital gains tax, and losses from derivatives can be offset only to a limited extent. Anyone who has traded with leverage during the current year should go through it with a tax adviser before the year ends.

Gram after the drop: three points for the week ahead

1. Check which form you hold GRAM in. Coins on an exchange, coins in the Telegram wallet and a leveraged position are three different risks. The one-year holding period applies only to the first two. Which devices are suitable for self-custody is shown in our hardware wallet comparison.
2. Set the two levels that count. Above, $1.30 as the first round hurdle; below, $1.20 as the line beneath which the weekly low of $1.157 comes back into reach. Monitoring needs no more than those two values; the tools for it are listed in our overview of crypto analytics platforms.
3. Factor in Wednesday. The Fed decision on October 28 moves smaller coins more than average. Traders working with leverage should check their liquidation price and margin beforehand; providers' terms are set out in our comparison of perp DEXs.

(As of October 26, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)