On July 30, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov stated in a Wednesday post that an early user of Telegram and Toncoin (TON) recently received an offer of $25 million to purchase the "@crypto" username on Telegram.
The username was initially purchased for $350,000 in 2023, and the username holder recently said: "If these cannot be taken away by others, I want to acquire all rare usernames." - a quote directly cited by Durov in his post.
All usernames on Telegram have been tokenized on the TON blockchain, which means each username is unique and non-replicable. According to Statista data, the most expensive usernames in 2024 are @news, which sold for as high as $5.8 million, and @auto, which sold for $5.2 million.
Durov wrote in his post: "Miracles happen when people can directly own their digital assets - just like this tokenized Telegram username, which has skyrocketed in value by 70 times." "Telegram users are true sovereign owners: no intermediaries, no forced confiscation, everything guaranteed by TON smart contracts."
