Telegram Gifts Go Live As Pavel Durov Celebrates 40th Birthday

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov recently turned 40, and to commemorate this event, he announced the launch of a special edition, “Gift.” Notably, Durov’s birthday also coincided with Telegram’s 11th anniversary. Durov took to Telegram to announce the release of this new limited-edition gift set. He claimed the popular BirthdayCollection emoji pack inspired it.

The Telegram Gift Edition

The “Gift” set includes three exclusively designed characters to celebrate this milestone. Therefore, they offer a fun and interactive experience for users. This Telegram Gift feature was initially introduced about a week ago. The reception from the Telegram community members was quite profound.

In a matter of 24 hours following the launch of the first two limited-edition gifts, which included 500,000 lollipops and 100,000 cherry blossom icons, the entire inventory sold out. Even Durov acknowledged the turnout, noting that the team did not expect the result in such a short time.

He assured the community members that the team behind the Gift will create a working system to handle sold-out products.

Additionally, Telegram intends to improve on the functionality of the newly introduced feature. The upgrade will include the users’ ability to convert their limited-edition gifts into Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on The Open Network (TON).

Users would get the opportunity to tokenize their digital gifts. Later, these tokenized assets could then be traded or auctioned on external blockchain platforms.

Pavel Durov Arrest, Release and Global Scrutiny

Noteworthy, Durov is celebrating this 40th birthday after a narrow escape from legal actions. He was arrested recently in France over some privacy compliance issues. His arrest brought some strain on Telegram’s operations. After mounted global pressure, the Telegram CEO was later released four days after but kept under judicial supervision.

The conditions of his release included the fact that the Russian-born tech mogul is not allowed to leave the territory of France. He was also asked to pay €5 million bail and report to the police twice weekly.

So far, Telegram has been under scrutiny in several regions including India and South Korea. It is worth noting that Telegram faces risk of a ban in India as it was recently used in a major data leak.