Telegram founder reveals investments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, is yet another big name in the tech industry backing Bitcoin. In a post from Tuesday (18), the director revealed that he would rather have bitcoin than a house.

The revelation came on the day Telegram issued US$270 million (R$1.3 billion) in bonds to fund the expansion of its business.

According to the director himself, he bought $ 250,000 worth of these securities himself, showing confidence in his project, one of the few investments he has.

The founder of Telegram talks about his starting numbers and his own investments

Pavel Durov begins his text and states that Telegram receives 2.5 million new users per day. However, he noted that this also entails more storage and connection costs.

To expand further, Telegram this week raised BRL 1.3 billion through the sale of its own securities. In addition to funds, Durov himself took part in the purchase.

“I personally bought about a quarter [de milhão de dólares] of new Telegram titles”observed Durov. “This is on top of the hundreds of millions I’ve spent over the last 10 years keeping Telegram up and running.”

More surprising than the support for his own project, the Telegram founder also revealed that he would rather own Bitcoin than own a house.

“Some people suggested I should have bought a house or a jet. But I prefer to stay focused on my work, without “owning” anything (well, apart from Telegram, a little bit of Bitcoin and a little bit of Toncoin).”

Toncoin (TON), currently the 17th largest cryptocurrency in the market, has strong ties to Telegram.

Formerly called the Telegram Open Network (GRAM), the project raised $1.7 billion in 2018 but was blocked by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Later, cryptocurrency began to be developed independently.

Telegram is better than its competitors, founder says

Returning to the Telegram figures, Pavel Durov stated that, despite the need to raise funds, his project is outperforming its competitors in terms of profitability.

“While Telegram is still not profitable (which would be impossible in its second year of monetization), in absolute numbers Telegram is closer to profitability than its peers like Twitter and Snap.”

Founded in 2013, Telegram is one of the most widely used messengers in the world. According to data from Statista, the application is only behind WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger.

The world's most popular messengers by millions of monthly users.  Source: Statistics.
The world’s most popular messengers by millions of monthly users. Source: Statistics.

Finally, the founder is a long time Bitcoin supporter. For example, in early 2022, Durov criticized Russia, the country where he was born, for trying to ban BTC.

Source: Live Coins

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