There's a popular messaging app across
Wall Street and in the crypto industry, and that is Telegram.
That company is now questioning the grounds for France's detention of its
CEO and co-founder Paul Durov was taken into custody at a Paris airport over the
weekend on suspicion of failing to take steps to prevent criminal use of the
platform. Joining us now is Bloomberg Technology
co-host Caroline Hyde, who has been following the story closely.
It is, I think it's fair to say, a strange one at that.
This is a platform that has really got into the crosshairs of multiple
governments around the world because of the way that people communicate on it,
particularly around riots and other things that might stir social unrest.
What exactly happened here? Now, why was he detained?
This is much more about the protection of children versus sexual abuse in
particular. This is seems to be the particular
formation of France, the area, the agency that has decided that they want
to be holding him for at least until Wednesday, whether or not they indeed
bring charges, whether they let him go free or whether or not he becomes and
witness to an investigation that's more deeply into the protection and
ultimately of children against sexual abuse.
They feel like many a government that perhaps Telegram is not as active at
protecting the sort of content that was on the social platform.
Now from the company itself. They're saying, look, it is not the
responsibility of the CEO and the co-founders as to what is actually said
on the social media platform that they do have ways and means in which they
take down calls to violence, for example, and they use I along with
individuals to be monitoring what's said across the platform.
But more broadly, they are far more pro free speech and therefore a lot more has
been said, and many would say in the U.K., for example, Keir Starmer, the new
prime minister, has been very outspoken against Telegram in the way in which
they feel some of the actions taken and riots stirred in the U.K.
Anti-immigration riots were indeed posted on Telegram.
And I also want to make a correction here.
The CEO's name is indeed Pavel Durov. And, you know, if you think about the
other people who are involved in the larger story around Telegram, what's
really at stake here? Who are the founders and who are the
investors, the founders, the brothers. And in many ways, Pavel himself has been
quoted as being ultimately the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.
Back in 2006, him and his brother set up what was an incredibly popular social
media platform. Now, because of their popularity in the
U.S., they did end up becoming rather focused upon by the Russian government,
shall we say. And they exited Russia fled, in fact,
over all because they felt that the ability to have freedom of speech in
Russia was curtailed. They moved.
He's now basically based in to buy, but also a citizen of France.
We don't know as to whether or not he's actually shirked his citizenship of
Russia. More broadly, Russia has spoken out
against the detention of the Russian citizen thus far, but him and his
brother set up telegram then in about 20 1314, when they were based here in the
United States, in in Dubai more broadly, and they were then focused in on again,
making sure that this was whether it was end to end encrypted.
But it's a safe space to be having conversations.
Perhaps there a little bit more on adjudicated as versus other social
media, but they have funded this. They he's meant to be worth about nine
or $10 billion in and of himself. But they do have a crypto related token,
which in many ways has got a lot of money from certain key investors.
All right. Well, let's talk about that.
We only have about a minute left with you.
Crypto is a crucial part of this story. Tell us a little bit more about the
token and maybe some of the investors involved.
The open network is what it's called. It's not actually directly held by
telegram, but it was sort of set up an alliance and a partnership with
Telegram. Dan Morehead of Pantera is a big
investor. They say it's their biggest ownership is
in Tom the token is for hard about $3 billion was wiped out It's the 10th
biggest crypto and indeed Telegram's success is ultimately directly in line
with its own success. It's about bringing blockchain and
crypto within the social media platform. In many ways, what Elon Musk has been
aiming to do is to build the ultimate large social media platform that we see
over in China, like a complete use of whether it's payments and also chat and
whether it's bookings more broadly. That is seemingly the way in which
Telegram was seen.