🤑 A tech blogger, Pavel Fedorov, just earned $80,000+ in TON 🤑 from selling his username @pavel on the Fragment auction platform.

📈 As an early adopter of Telegram, Mr. Fedorov claimed the @pavel username 9 years ago for free. He put it up for auction a week ago. After a fierce bidding war, the crypto entrepreneur @founder, who owns @crypto and many other Telegram handles, won the auction. In a surprising twist, @founder gifted me the @pavel name earlier today.

🤝 Congratulations to Pavel Fedorov, and many thanks to @founder for the generous gift. This shows how Telegram users benefit from direct ownership over their names. $350M worth of Telegram usernames and anonymous numbers have been sold in the last 18 months.

🆕 The newest versions of Telegram allow you to see when and for how much a username was sold. To check it out, you can go to my channel’s profile and tap on @pavel or @snow. A few minutes ago, I bought @paul on Fragment for 🤑 10,000 TON — to prevent more people from giving me generous gifts 😆

-@Durov

@NewsAndTipsNT 📰

❤Telegram Android Beta
◾️Version: 10.12.0
◾️Build: 47079

What's New :

• Profile Icon for Forwarded Messages
• Granular Delete Options
• New  Recent Actions UI
• Custom Emojis in polls ( Font formatting : soon)
• SMS Phrases
• Pull Up to go to the next Recent Topic
• Quick toggle for Stealth mode
• Extended Sharing for live location

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• Animated emojis in poll explanation 🆕
• New biz coin with white background in light theme 🆕
• Delete options rights fixes 🆕
• Crash fixes 🆕

🔄Previous Version

💡 In February 2022, I suggested to restrict Telegram channels in Russia and Ukraine, because they were being used for military propaganda. However, both our Ukrainian and Russian users vehemently opposed restrictions, prioritizing the freedom to access information, even when it’s biased. I supported our users’ choice 🫡

🚫 We still ban accounts and bots that collect coordinates to target strikes or post direct personal information with calls to violence. We don’t want Telegram to be a tool for violence — so please report such channels/bots to us if you see them ⛔️

✉️ As for general news/propaganda channels, we receive official letters from Apple that indicate that certain changes here may be unavoidable, at least for users accessing Telegram on iPhones from Ukrainian SIM cards. As I explained in my interview, to stay accessible to its users, Telegram must consider requests coming from App Stores 🍎

🗽Were it entirely up to us, we would always give our users what they ask for: access to uncensored information and opinions so that they can make their own decisions. However, it's not always up to us 🥲

- @Pavel