In summary
- Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on Saturday evening.
- Durov was arrested by France’s National Anti-Fraud Office on charges related to alleged illegal conduct by Telegram users.
- The price of Toncoin (TON) plummeted following news of the arrest, falling nearly 17% in the past 24 hours.
Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on Saturday evening, according to a local media report, after arriving on his private jet from Azerbaijan. As the news spread, the price of Toncoin (TON)—the Cryptocurrency affiliated with The Open Network—plummeted sharply.
Durov, 39, was arrested by France’s National Anti-Fraud Office, TF1 reports, on what the publication said were several charges related to alleged illegal conduct by Telegram users, which the service allegedly refused to moderate. According to the publication, this includes charges linked to facilitating terrorism, the sale of narcotics and stolen goods, fraud, and more.
Decrypt reached out to Telegram for confirmation and comment but did not immediately receive a response.
It is unclear why Durov, who reportedly does not travel to many countries where Telegram has faced scrutiny, had flown to France on Sunday. TF1 quotes an unnamed investigator as saying Durov will “certainly” end up in pretrial detention.
Telegram’s user base recently surpassed the 950 million mark, Durov reported in July, with the recent surge in users coinciding with the rise of cryptocurrency-powered games running on the messaging app via built-in “mini apps.” Hamster Kombat, the largest of these, has reportedly amassed over 300 million players in recent months ahead of an upcoming token launch and airdrop.
The Open Network was originally created internally at Telegram, but the company abandoned the project in 2020 amid regulatory scrutiny. Development continued externally through a community of contributors, and over the past year, Telegram has increasingly embraced and integrated the Blockchain network.
While that close association has seemingly helped push TON’s price up by over 300% over the past year, that connection appears to be weighing down TON’s price hard on Saturday. TON is down nearly 17% over the past 24 hours as of this writing, and has fallen from a price of $6.80 before the reports came out to a current price of $5.61, according to CoinGecko.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Crypto Keynote USA
For the Latest Crypto News, Follow ©KeynoteUSA on Twitter Or Google News.