Chinese crypto journalist and blogger Colin Wu has shared that the founder of Telegram App, popular with the crypto community, has revealed his crypto holdings.
The founder, Pavel Durov who is worth $17.5 billion as of 2023, according to Wu, does not believe in investing in houses or airplanes, but he seems to believe in Bitcoin. Per Wu's tweet, Durov owns only Telegram stock, Bitcoin and some Toncoin (TON) — the native crypto of Telegram's Open Network Layer 1 blockchain based on the PoS consensus mechanism.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov stated that while some people suggest investing in houses or airplanes, he personally owns nothing except for Telegram, some bitcoins, and some Toncoin. This week, Telegram raised $210 million through a bond issue, with Pavel Durov personally buying…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 19, 2023
Earlier this week, Durov raised a hefty amount of funds to support Telegram. The app gets around 2.5 million registered users on a daily basis, and over the span of the past 2.5 years, has seen an inflow of more than 300 million users. At the time of this writing, the app has more than 800 million monthly active users.
Telegram raises $210 million from investors
TechCrunch has reported that, this week, the aforementioned app managed to raise $210 million by selling bonds to investors. A quarter of these bonds were purchased by the founder himself, Pavel Durov. As for investors, he would not reveal their names, just stating that they are highly sophisticated, have "stellar reputations" and specialize in bonds investment.
Initially, the company issued bonds worth $270 million. Per Durov, Telegram remains unprofitable for him, and this fundraising round was aimed at gaining money to take the app closer to the break-even level. Over the last 10 years, according to Durov, he had used hundreds of millions of USD of his own money to keep Telegram afloat.
Here's what crypto Elon Musk holds compared to Durov
In his earlier tweets, tech innovator, owner of Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk confessed that he holds Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.
In early 2021, Elon Musk announced that Tesla acquired $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and put it on its balance sheet. An announcement about Tesla beginning to accept the flagship crypto for its e-cars followed from Musk.
That pushed the Bitcoin price up but did not last long, however, as the Tesla chief tweeted that BTC payments were halted over his concerns about proof-of-work mining harming the environment. Musk promised that the company would resume accepting Bitcoin as soon as miners would begin to use renewable energy sources and make mining at least 50% green. Per Michael Saylor, this goal was reached back in 2021.
By now, Tesla has sold its Bitcoin holdings, but instead, Tesla and another company of Elon Musk's — SpaceX — accept DOGE for their merchandise. Musk has never mentioned whether he still holds Bitcoin, but it seems that he definitely continues to hold Dogecoin.
Vladislav Sopov
Gamza Khanzadaev
