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- Pavel Durov has acknowledged his large Bitcoin holdings, framing the cryptocurrency as the highest form of economic freedom.
- Telegram has slowly incorporated crypto payments for speed and security, most notably its recent addition of Stellar.
On a recent episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast, Telegram founder Pavel Durov, the mind behind the privacy-focused messaging app with over 900 million users, shared how Bitcoin (BTC) shaped his financial journey.
Durov recalled repurchasing his first few thousand BTC in 2013, when prices hovered around $700 per coin. This was just a few years after Satoshi founded it in 2009, and the market was still skeptical about its credibility.
At the time, he admitted he didn’t think much of it, only to face ridicule when Bitcoin later crashed below $200 during the bear market. But instead of panicking, he doubled down on his conviction.
I don’t care. I’m not going to sell it. I believe in this thing,
Durov said, explaining that Bitcoin represented the kind of money that can’t be confiscated or censored. To him, Bitcoin is the ultimate means of exchange and a symbol of financial freedom, a philosophy that extends to crypto as a whole.
Contrary to public perception, Durov explained that Telegram has always been a money-losing operation for him personally. Critics often assume his wealth comes from the app, but he credits Bitcoin as the lifeline that kept him afloat.
“So I have been able to fund my lifestyle, so to speak, from my Bitcoin investment,” he shared.
Some people think if I’m able to rent nice locations or fly private, it’s because I somehow extract money from Telegram. Like I said, Telegram is a money-losing operation for me personally. Bitcoin is something that allowed me to stay afloat.
Why Durov Believes Bitcoin Will Hit $1 Million
Bitcoin’s appeal lies in its scarcity and independence from any government control. Durov predicted that Bitcoin would one day be priced at $1 million, pointing to the endless money printing by governments as a sharp contrast to Bitcoin’s 21 million fixed supply.
Fiat currencies can be inflated at will; on the other hand, Bitcoin has a predictable issuance schedule. The currency is halved roughly every four years in an event known as the halving, which reduces the reward for miners and slows down new supply entering the market.
The last halving event took place in April 2024, and the final halving is estimated to happen around the year 2140 once the 21 million cap is reached. For Durov, this makes Bitcoin a permanent fixture in the global economy, while the future of fiat currencies remains uncertain.
He went on to discuss his vision for social platforms, highlighting the origins of The Open Network (TON). He explained that the blockchain was first developed in 2018 and 2019 as a way to integrate decentralized technology into Telegram deeply.
For him, blockchain represents one of the key tools for enabling freedom; that’s why the Open Network’s architecture divides the system into a masterchain, multiple workchains, and millions of shardchains that process transactions in parallel.
As a result, TON can handle a peak of 104,715 transactions per second (TPS). In comparison, Ethereum (ETH) can process 15-30 TPS, and Bitcoin can handle 6-7 TPS. Each unit of BTC is currently priced at $114,500, after a slight increase of 1.77% in the past week, placing it just 7.95% below its $124k peak.
