Telegram CEO Durov Holds ‘Some Bitcoin’ and ‘Some Toncoin’

• Durov revealed that Telegram had over 800 million monthly active users at the beginning of the year, with more than 2.5 million new registrations daily.
• Durov also announced that his company issued $270 million worth of Telegram bonds this week to finance growth and balance attempts.
• The CEO claimed that compared to competitors like Twitter and Snap, his company is “closer to profitability in absolute terms.”

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced that the company has issued $270 million worth of bonds to finance Telegram’s growth, and he also mentioned holding Bitcoin and Toncoin.

Telegram Issues $270 Million in Bonds

Pavel Durov emphasized the growth of the Telegram platform, stating that it had over 800 million monthly active users at the beginning of the year, with more than 2.5 million new registrations daily. Although the platform is not yet profitable, Durov claimed that his company is “closer to profitability in absolute terms” compared to competitors like Twitter and Snap.

Durov also announced that his company issued $270 million worth of Telegram bonds this week to finance growth and balance attempts. While he did not specify the bond investors, he mentioned they were “reputable funds with excellent reputation,” and he stated that he personally purchased a quarter of the bonds as a way to invest in the platform’s growth.

According to Durov, this recent investment is in addition to the “hundreds of millions” of dollars he has injected into Telegram over the past decade to keep the messaging application running.

Durov Holds Bitcoin and Toncoin

Durov also mentioned two assets he holds, Bitcoin and Toncoin, but did not disclose the amount he owns.

Toncoin is the rebranding of the original TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain project developed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov. When TON was planned to launch in October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Telegram, leading the team to halt the project.

Despite Telegram’s discontinuation of support for TON, the company made the code open-source and allowed the community to take the initiative.

Telegram added a new feature enabling the purchase, swapping, and peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions of USDT on the Tron network. Durov previously stated that he planned to create non-custodial wallets and a decentralized exchange to prevent another FTX-like crash on the messaging platform.