Telegram founder praises privacy in crypto, worries about future of secure hardware

Despite the increasing role of governments as they involve themselves in privacy matters, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is still optimistic about the future, saying those who care about privacy could still preserve it with technologies, similar to the ones already developed in the crypto industry.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Durov suggested there will be new hardware communication devices created, as the matter of online privacy becomes more evident. Commenting on the matter, the Telegram CEO noted that the crypto market has already solved that problem, referring to hardware crypto wallets.

“I’m an optimist. I think some new secure hardware communication devices will be created in a similar way that now we have hardware wallets to store your cryptocurrency. Maybe we’ll have secure communication devices to send messages or do voice calls.”

Pavel Durov

Speaking on other crypto-related ventures, Durov mentioned Telegram’s brainchild The Open Network, which faced opposition from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019.

“To be completely fair, Telegram did take outside money, we issued bonds three years ago… and before that, we had a a cryptocurrency project that also raised funds. There were instances where we raised outside funding. But when it comes to the company’s equity, we didn’t give anyone ownership or voting control or anything like that.”

Pavel Durov