Telegram Gift NFT Sells for $20,000 as Pavel Durov Backs Young Coders
A free coding trophy just turned into roughly $20,000 after a US high school student sold his Telegram Gift NFT for 15,000 Grams. Pavel Durov held the sale up as startup money.
The price cleared about 40 times what Telegram guaranteed the average prize was worth. Durov posted the result on his channel and urged other winners to go build something.
How a Free Prize Became $20,000
Jonathan He won gold at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Durov ranked him seventh in the world.
Instead of the usual medal or cheque, the prize was an Algorithm Cup, a digital collectible that lives on TON, the blockchain behind Gram. Winners can sell theirs to anyone.
Jonathan He competes for Team USA and interns as an engineer at trading firm Liquid. He sat fifth after Day 1 on 246 points out of 300, co-founder Franklyn Wang said.
