Telegram founder and owner Pavel Durov is convinced Bitcoin will eventually sell for $1 million a coin, while the future of fiat currencies is not that 0 an interview for Lex Fridman’s podcast, the tech entrepreneur discussed a number of topics around him, including his troubles with governments, freedom of speech, and the right to 1 bought Bitcoin early and kept buying Pavel Durov admitted he has been a big believer in Bitcoin since almost the very beginning of the leading 2 got his first bitcoins in 2013, at that time’s peak of $700, when he “just threw a couple of millions there.” When the following year, Bitcoin fell to around $300, he “didn’t care too much” and wasn’t going to sell anyway: “Nobody can confiscate your Bitcoin from 3 can censor you, for political 4 is the ultimate means of exchange.” The Russian-born businessman revealed his Bitcoin investment, and not his Telegram business, helped him fund his lifestyle.
“Telegram is a money-losing operation for me 5 is something that allowed me to stay afloat,” he stated, adding: “And I believe it will come to a point when Bitcoin is worth $1 million.” Durov suggested reading the trends: “Governments keep printing money like no tomorrow,” he pointed out, noting that at the same time, Bitcoin has a predictable inflation which stops at a certain 6 was positive Bitcoin is here to stay, while it remains to be seen whether this will be the case with all the fiat currencies in existence 7 would rather leave than share info Answering a question he has likely heard many times before, Pavel Durov insisted “Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, including governments and intelligence services.” Emphasizing that data within the messenger is encrypted, he stressed that the system’s design makes it impossible even for Telegram to share user correspondence with state 8 rejected any notion this could happen in the future and declared that the company would rather leave a jurisdiction than do 9 privacy protection as fundamental, he criticized authorities working against it: “You don’t like privacy, and you think you should ban encryption in your country, like the EU is trying to do now for all its member states?
Well, go ahead. We’ll quit this market.” Durov commented on his recent woes in France, where he was arrested in August 2024 and spent time confined in a small cell, amid accusations of complicity with crimes allegedly enabled by his 10 also recalled attempts by the French government to exploit the situation he was 11 example, during Romania’s presidential election last year, he was asked if he was ready to shut down Telegram channels supportive of the conservative candidate or opposing “pro-European” 12 week, the 40-year-old Russian accused the French intelligence of also pressing him to censor Telegram channels ahead of the presidential vote in Moldova, Romania’s close neighbor, in exchange for favorable treatment in his ongoing legal case in France, as reported by Cryptopolitan.
Durov’s decision to make Telegram different finally delivers Pavel Durov owns 100% of Telegram and has invested millions of dollars of his own money into the messaging app, which only became profitable in 13 platform does not permit advertisement based on users’ private data and doesn’t show ads in private chats and small groups, neither has an intrusive news 14 commented: “We had to innovate a lot in order to reach a point where we are profitable, without having to resort to dubious business activities involving exploiting personal data of users.” In 2022, Telegram introduced a subscription model, for certain additional features, and it now has over 15 million paid subscribers, having made more than $500 million from premium subscriptions this year 15 messenger enabled in-app payments and purchases for its growing ecosystem of mini app developers, charging a reasonable commission, and is experimenting with blockchain 16 highlighted the development of the TON (The Open Network) blockchain, which started as a Telegram project but was eventually launched by the open-source community, without its direct 17 also recently noted the significant growth in prices of NFT gifts on Telegram, making TON one of the largest blockchains in terms of daily volume of non-fungible 18 smartest crypto minds already read our 19 in?
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