🆒 In case you missed it — the latest Telegram update is epic:

— 📥 Direct messages in channels
— 🖼 HD photo sharing
— 🗂 Topic tabs in group chats
— ✂️ Voice message trimming
— 📊 Expanded poll options

We’ve been receiving great feedback from the owners of large channels and groups. And this is just the beginning — direct messages in channels lay the foundation for much more in the weeks ahead 🚀

📈 Telegram Collectible Gifts went up in price several times in the past 30 days 🆙

💚 TON is now the #1 blockchain by daily NFT trading volume (or #2 after Ethereum if off-chain trades are not counted) 🏆

🔗 Sources — here and here 📊

🎙 A week ago, Tucker Carlson published an interview with me about what happened in France. It was covered by media in many countries — except, interestingly, in France. None of the French newspapers mentioned the interview. 🤐

📰 However, the French media hasn’t lost interest in Telegram. Last week, Le Monde, the country’s main newspaper, invited its readers to report whether they watch pirated football matches on Telegram. This attempt to crowdsource a negative story about us appears to be part of a broader strategy. 😐

😑 In just the 7 weeks following my arrest in Paris, Le Monde published 40 negative articles about Telegram. In violation of journalistic ethics, they did not ask us for a comment in 37 of these 40 articles and always ignored the factual corrections we sent them. 🤦‍♂️

📣 Such a media environment is alarming. This is why platforms like Telegram are so important — we enable people to access all points of view and decide for themselves. We believe people are smart and can be trusted with the unfiltered truth. ✉️

👨‍💻 Telegram’s looking for an Android dev — who’ll earn $1M / year after tax. 🧻

🥇 The only way in is to win our coding contest that ends on July 11. The task? Implement the animation from this mockup in our open-source Android app. 🤖 https://xn--r1a.website/contest/420

🗽 The Independence Day gifts sold out within minutes. It took just 45 seconds for all 15,000 🎁 Crystal Eagles (around $100 each) to be claimed. The 300,000 🎁 Statues of Liberty were gone in under 5 minutes. Lastly, all 500,000 🎁 Liberty Torches sold out in just 10 minutes.

🎁 @SnoopDogg’s digital collectibles drop on Telegram sold out in just 30 minutes today, generating $12M in sales. 🎁

🎁 Nearly 1M unique NFTs, inspired by Snoop’s iconic style, were gone in record time.

🎁 Blockchain minting and the secondary market go live in 21 days. It’s going to be wild. 🎁

↗️ If you want to reach your full potential and maintain clarity of mind, stay away from addictive substances. My success and health are the result of 20+ years of complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal drugs. Short-term pleasure isn’t worth your future. 🚭

Here’s what I said about this 7.5 years ago — still true today.

➕ If you’re a student choosing what to focus on, pick MATH. It will teach you to relentlessly rely on your own brain, think logically, break down problems, and solve them step by step in the right order. That’s the core skill you’ll need to build companies and manage projects. 🏢

👑 Rare Telegram gifts, numbers, and usernames — once bought for just a few dollars — can now sell for over $100,000. But this surge in value has a dark side. 🤦‍♂️

⚠️ We’re seeing scammers blackmail users, trying to force them into handing over these valuable collectibles. There are also reports of channels extorting money by threatening to leak personal information or sensitive data. Some have even turned this into a business model — publishing damaging posts and charging for their removal. 💰

✋ This is both illegal and immoral, and it won’t fly with us. 🪰

🤙 If you’ve been threatened or blackmailed by scammers or channels, please report it immediately. Send me a private message in this channel with as much proof as possible. We’ll remove these bad actors from our platform and keep Telegram a safe place for everyone. 🪿

💡 If you can’t contact me directly due to the paywall, feel free to reach out to our support team at @notoscam to report any blackmailing attempts. Include the hashtag #blackmail in your message so it reaches the right team member. 📞

🫡 Unfortunately, I can’t remove the paywall from my account — when I do, I receive thousands of messages per minute, making it impossible to read or respond to anyone. 🛡

🪙 A TON early adopter bought the @crypto username on Telegram for $350,000 2,5 years ago — and recently received an offer for $25,000,000. Here’s what he said about Telegram usernames:

“If these can’t be taken away from me, I want them all.”

💫 When people have direct ownership of their digital assets, magic happens — like this tokenized Telegram handle soaring 70x in value. Telegram users are sovereign owners: no middlemen, no confiscation, all secured by TON smart contracts.

✊ Telegram is the only major social platform that treats users as free people with unalienable rights — including the unbreakable right to own their digital identities and assets.

🍬 My girlfriend is turning 2️⃣5️⃣ today.
💝 She’s collecting pink/violet gifts on the cyberpunk backdrop, so I had to pay 15,000 TON (~$52,500) for a Plush Pepe 🐸

Tap 😎 if you think it was worth it — and 🧊 if you think it wasn’t.

https://xn--r1a.website/nft/PlushPepe-858

🏆 Yesterday marked a historic milestone: for the first time, investors gained access to a TON-holding company listed on the US stock market (ticker: VERB). This company is deploying $558 million to accumulate Toncoin — never selling, only buying more over time.

↗️ VERB’s stock more than doubled on its first trading day, pushing its market cap above $1 billion and earning it unicorn status on day one. The investor list includes long-time TON supporters like Kingsway, Vy Capital, and Ribbit, alongside many new institutional backers.

🪙 TON (The Open Network) is an infinitely scalable blockchain that we helped develop years ago to meet the needs of Telegram’s hundreds of millions of users. Today, TON is the economic backbone of Telegram — much like a national currency powers a country’s economy.

🌎 On Telegram, everything runs on TON: from payouts to creators and app developers to ad payments, mini apps and collectibles like usernames, numbers, and gifts. As a result, TON is now the #2 blockchain by daily NFT trading volume, second only to Ethereum.

🧠 It’s no surprise that Verb Technology — to be rebranded as TON Strategy — has chosen TON as its primary treasury asset. It’s mirroring MicroStrategy’s bitcoin playbook, which let it grow from $1B to $100B+ in 5 years. The half a billion $ Verb is investing into TON is just the start.

📣 Following my post 20 days ago, users have sent us hundreds of reports about scams and blackmail. 👮‍♂️

⛔️ Based on these reports, this week we’re banning numerous channels for doxxing and extortion. 🔒

❌ A ban for this reason means we have undeniable evidence that a channel’s admins published defamatory posts, then deleted them in exchange for payment from victims. Some have even been caught selling so-called “protection blocks” — fees victims must pay to avoid being targeted. 💵

❌ Telegram is not a place for doxxing or blackmail. And to those running such channels: don’t waste your time creating clones — we’ll find you. 📡

🪙 Good week for TON. Verb, a NASDAQ-listed company that has chosen TON as its primary asset, has successfully raised $558 million to begin buying and stockpiling TON immediately.

Meanwhile, Coinbase Ventures has also started accumulating TON.

Exciting times ahead! 🚀

👨‍🏫 A month ago, my father — a leading expert in Ancient Roman literature — turned 80. I asked what advice I should pass to the next generation. He gave me 3:

👨‍💻 1. Lead by example. People — especially kids — follow what you do, not what you say. Watching my father work tirelessly on numerous books and scientific papers showed me and my brother the meaning of dedication and inspired us to work hard too.

💖 2. Focus on the positive. Growing up in post-war Leningrad, my father learned to control emotions to be a positive force for his family, colleagues and society. He taught me to frame thoughts in ways that bring the most good, even in hard times.

🫡 3. Prioritize conscience. Studying and translating thinkers from Julius Caesar to Seneca, my father saw that morals outlast talent. Moral compass, unlike intelligence or creativity, is the ultimate human quality that will not lose value even in the age of AI.

1️⃣2️⃣ As Telegram turns 12 today, I want it to keep following my father’s advice — and:

🏆 Lead by example, setting trends for the messaging world.

🚀 Be a positive force, bringing joy to our users.

❤️ Prioritize conscience, staying true to our principles.

🍬 To celebrate Telegram’s birthday and the summer holiday season, we’re dropping some limited-edition gifts within the next hour: Durov’s Sunglasses, Resistance Dog, Sandcastle, Surfboard and Pink Flamingo 🎁

🕶🕶🕶🕶 Telegram’s birthday/summer gifts sold out in under 3 minutes, grossing over $11M.
To make this round fairer, we limited purchases of Durov’s Sunglasses 🕶 (~$600, max 3 per user) and Resistance Dog 🕶 (~$100, max 5 per user) to Premium users only. Still, both sold out in 15 seconds. 🥹

Should we release 2-3 more gifts on September 1st with even tighter buying restrictions? 🤔

➕ One year ago, the French police detained me for 4 days because some people I’d never heard of used Telegram to coordinate crimes. Arresting a CEO of a major platform over the actions of its users was not only unprecedented — it was legally and logically absurd.

A year later, the ‘criminal investigation’ against me is still struggling to find anything that I or Telegram did wrong. Our moderation practices align with industry standards, and Telegram has always responded to every legally binding request from France.

Ironically, I was arrested due to the French police’s own mistake: before August 2024, they ignored French and EU laws and hadn’t sent any of their queries to Telegram via the required legal process. They could have learned the correct procedure simply by googling it or asking.

One year after this strange arrest, I still have to return to France every 14 days, with no appeal date in sight. Sadly, the only outcome of my arrest so far has been massive damage to France’s image as a free country. 🛠

✊ We’ll keep fighting — and we will win 😎

🏎 NFTs are back — reimagined. 18 Telegram gifts bought for just $57 a few months ago were traded for a $350,000 car. 🚗