Quick Breakdown
- Pavel Durov says early Bitcoin investments, not Telegram, finance his lifestyle.
- He predicts Bitcoin could one day be worth $1 million due to global monetary inflation.
- TON, once blocked by regulators, has grown into a major NFT-focused blockchain.
Early Bitcoin believer
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has revealed that his long-held Bitcoin investment has been sustaining his lifestyle, not revenue from the messaging app. Speaking on Lex Fridman’s podcast, the Russian tech entrepreneur said he first bought thousands of Bitcoin in 2013, when it was trading around $700.
“I just threw a couple of million there,”
Durov recalled, admitting he bought at what was then a “local maximum.” When Bitcoin later plunged below $200, critics mocked his decision, but he stood firm.
“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.”
Bitcoin keeps him “afloat”
Durov clarified that his personal wealth does not come from Telegram.
“Some people think if I’m able to rent nice locations or fly private, it’s because I somehow extract money from Telegram,”
he said.
“Telegram is a money-losing operation for me personally. Bitcoin is something that allowed me to stay afloat.”
The Telegram chief predicted Bitcoin could eventually reach $1 million, citing governments’ endless money-printing. “Nobody’s printing Bitcoin,” he added.
“Bitcoin is here to stay. All the fiat currencies remain to be seen.”
The TON blockchain vision
Durov, who was arrested in 2024 in France and charged with facilitating crimes committed by Telegram users, also discussed the Telegram Open Network (TON), developed in 2018–2019 to support blockchain features for its massive user base. Durov argued that Bitcoin and Ethereum were not scalable enough to handle hundreds of millions of users, which led to TON’s design around “shardchains” for inherent scalability.
Although Telegram abandoned the project after U.S. regulatory pushback, TON has since flourished independently. Now rebranded as The Open Network, it powers a growing NFT market.
“TON has become, I think, the largest or the second largest blockchain in terms of daily NFT trading volumes,”
Durov said.
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