When French authorities arrested Pavel Durov this weekend, Elon Musk and other critics slammed the move as a threat to free speech. But it also called attention to the uncomfortable reality that the app has long been an open air bazaar for illicit goods ranging from heroin to stolen credit cards to machine guns. Recently customer reviews give a flavor of what's on offer.
“Nowhere near the standard you expect. Harsh ammonia smell. Very jittery. One star,” writes a disgruntled customer of their $240 Colombian cocaine purchase. Another reviewer reported a better experience, leaving a five-star rating and gushing, “Better than street stuff around me! Recommended.”
While there have always been corners of the web where such transactions flourish, Telegram stands out as one of the world’s top five most downloaded apps and the go-to communications platform for everyone from activists to cryptocurrency enthusiasts. A recent tour by Fortune of Telegram channels that operate like stores revealed that it’s quick and easy to find everything from jars of heroin to stolen stimulus checks to AK-47 machine guns.
Telegram’s end-to-end encryption means that no third party can access user data. But as a result, it’s failed to build an ad-based economy and regulate content. So to keep the lights on without selling user data or enduring the regulatory oversight required by going public, the app turned to crypto. (Initially, Telegram created the Telegram Open Network (TON) but abandoned the project because of regulatory issues. The TON Foundation resumed work on the blockchain to preserve the tech, renaming it The Open Network and launching Toncoin.)
If successful, Telegram could become a “super app” without needing to clean up its act. But the implications of this run deeper than bringing the dark net to the masses: Extremists and criminals running popular channels could earn crypto for their content.
“Creating a Telegram is easier to create than a Facebook account,” says David Maimon, a professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University who’s been monitoring thousands of illicit groups and channels on Telegram since 2019. For criminals, “Telegram now is the place to go.”
The dark net in your pocket
Telegram’s philosophy is rooted in its political origins. CEO Pavel Durov created Russia’s most popular social media network, VKontakte. In 2014, he was forced to flee after refusing to share the data of its Ukrainian users with the government. Prior to his expulsion, he’d developed Telegram to communicate with his brother, and now CTO, Nikolai, out of fear of government spying.
With over 900 million active monthly users, Telegram has almost doubled in size since 2021—and aims to reach 1.5 billion by 2030. Headquartered in Dubai, it has “disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.” As a result, it’s hard to regulate and monetize, spawning a boom in illicit channels. (Fortune sent messages to Telegram’s PR channel seeking additional comment but received no response.)
The dark net itself is slow, requires the Tor browser, and its complex URLs often change. Telegram can be easily found in the App Store. And if someone can imagine something they want, Telegram almost certainly has it. LSD and OxyContin. Cloned credit cards. Stimulus checks. Winding paragraphs of stolen identities, with victims reduced to names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, emails, passwords, home addresses, and card numbers. Typing loosely related jargon into the app’s search engine produces dozens of channels, many with tens of thousands of members competing to offer you the best deal.
Channels feature drop-down menus, shopping carts, wish lists, and reviews. One “exclusively for members in the carding industry” offers free tutorials on how to commit fraud, before customers graduate to buying CVV codes and card clones. “Our hundreds of satisfied customers will attest to the fact that we only offer the highest caliber of supplies for your project. We appreciate your business!” the admin writes in a broadcast to over 50,000 members. In the more banal corners, discounted gift cards, flights, and hotel stays are exchanging hands. “It’s really crazy what’s going on. The spectrum is really wide,” says Maimon.
Thus attracting big advertising dollars has proved to be a challenge. “If you protect data and privacy, you can’t sell ads,” Cosmo Jiang, a portfolio manager at Pantera Capital, tells Fortune. “They’ve been really bad at monetization.”
Telegram launched an ad platform in 2021. Advertisers can post text messages of 160 characters or fewer in channels with at least 1,000 subscribers. Telegram channels generate 1 trillion views monthly, but only 10% of these are monetized with ads, Durov said in February.
Turning to crypto
An alternative option for Telegram to spin up some money is crypto, which promises the “highest potential to keep its control and monetize,” says Jiang of Pantera, which has invested in TON. The funding is Pantera’s “largest investment ever,” and earlier this month, the firm revealed it’s adding to its initial sum, according to a letter shared with investors and viewed by Fortune.
Launched in 2018, the original TON network was abandoned in 2020 following a court battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But now, amid a more favorable regulatory environment and improved market conditions, the company is running headfirst toward crypto in a desperate bid to monetize without bowing to the authorities.
TON aka Toncoin, notes Jiang, is Telegram’s “largest liquid asset on their balance sheet.” It accrues staking rewards from transaction fees and protocol issuance. In addition, there are “commercial agreements” whereby it earns more TON over time based on certain performance criteria, Jiang adds.
Telegram in September saw the launch of a self-custodial wallet called TON Space—built by third-party developers—that allows users to send USDT, its native Toncoin, and Bitcoin to other users. The majority of illicit payments are made off-app via crypto, says Maimon, although he’s seen “some mentions” of payments via the TON wallet beginning to pop up on Russian-operated channels. But with the wallet still in its infancy, TON transfers for illicit goods could become more mainstream.
Building on this momentum, Telegram in March announced that channel owners would start to receive 50% of any revenue generated by ads in their channels, with all payments settled on TON. It also revealed its Mini Apps feature, which allows users to build apps within Telegram, in a bid to become increasingly like the super app WeChat, which boasts over 1.3 billion mostly Chinese users.
While recently scrolling through some of the illicit channels, the only ads to appear were links to rival shops. So, at least for now, criminals running shops and extremists broadcasting propaganda will be paid in Toncoin for ads on their channels.
So far, Telegram’s crypto-focused gambit is working. Toncoin has nearly tripled since March, trading near $7, according to CoinGecko data. The same month of the revenue-sharing announcement, Durov revealed the company is “nearing profitability.”
“If TON really does take off, then they never have to go public,” says Jiang. In a channel dedicated to stolen stimulus checks, a vendor quotes Lil Wayne: “Scared money makes no money.” In another, a shop for stolen bank details that broadcasts to over 27,000 subscribers, are the words: “Put food on the table.”
(This article has been updated to add clarifications on The Open Network's role in developing the TON blockchain and that the self-custodial wallet integrated into Telegram was developed by a third party.)
