Telegram CEO Pavel Durov revealed that he bought thousands of Bitcoin in 2013 at $700. This investment has allowed him “to stay afloat.”
According to Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, he invested in Bitcoin when the cryptocurrency was in its infancy. He has since used his holdings to fund his lifestyle.
I was a big believer in Bitcoin since more or less the start of it. My first few thousand Bitcoin were purchased in 2013, and I didn’t care much, the Russian tech entrepreneur said on Lex Fridman’s podcast on Tuesday.
He added that the “local maximum” was when he purchased, which was around $700 per BTC. A couple of million dollars were just thrown in, he said.
A few people ridiculed him when the price went down after Bitcoin tanked below $200 in the bear market that followed, but they were told by him, “I don’t care.”
“I’m not going to sell it. I believe in this thing. I think this is the way money should work. Nobody can confiscate your Bitcoin from you. Nobody can censor you for political reasons.”
Durov Credits Bitcoin for Keeping Him Afloat
Durov said that his lifestyle has been funded by his Bitcoin investment. “Some people think if I’m able to rent nice locations or fly private, it’s because money is somehow extracted from Telegram by me,” he said.
“Like I said, Telegram is a money-losing operation for me personally. Bitcoin is something that allowed me to stay afloat.”
He predicted that “it will come to a point when Bitcoin is worth $1 million” due to governments “printing money like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Nobody’s printing Bitcoin,” he said, adding that it has predictable inflation and will stop being made at a certain point. “Bitcoin is here to stay. All the fiat currencies remain to be seen.”
Pavel Durov Speaks on TON
Durov, who was arrested a year ago in France and charged with facilitating crimes committed by Telegram users, also discussed the Telegram Open Network. This was developed in 2018 and 2019 to provide a blockchain for the messenger service.
He added that Bitcoin and Ether were “not scalable enough to cope with the load that would be created by our hundreds of millions of users.”
The key innovation, according to him, was inherent scalability through “shardchains.” However, despite the successful development of the technology, it could not be launched by Telegram due to regulatory restrictions in the U.S.
The project, which is now called The Open Network, is deeply embedded in the Telegram ecosystem. It has gained momentum for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“TON has become, I think, the largest or the second largest blockchain in terms of daily NFT trading volumes.”
The network’s native token, Toncoin, hit an all-time high of $8.25 in mid-2024 but has since fallen more than 67% from that level.
