Teen's Telegram NFT Sells for $20K as Durov Backs Young Coders

A high school student in the US has made headlines after selling his Telegram Gift NFT for a whopping $20,000. The young coder, Jonathan He, won gold at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) and was awarded an Algorithm Cup, a digital collectible on the TON blockchain.

The prize was valued by Telegram at around $500, but one of the medalists took it to auction and sold it for 15,000 Grams, which is approximately $20,400. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, highlighted the sale in a post on his channel, urging other winners to use their Grams as seed money.

Durov shared an anecdote about his own experience launching his first company, VKontakte, with just $20,000 20 years ago. He encouraged the young programmers to put their Algorithm Cups to similar use and build something new. The sale comes at a time when Gram has lost 56% of its value over the past year.