A tech blogger, Pavel Fedorov, just earned $80,000+ in TON from selling his username @pavel on the Fragment auction platform.

As an early adopter of Telegram, Mr. Fedorov claimed the @pavel username 9 years ago for free. He put it up for auction a week ago. After a fierce bidding war, the crypto entrepreneur @founder, who owns @crypto and many other Telegram handles, won the auction. In a surprising twist, @founder gifted me the @pavel name earlier today.

Congratulations to Pavel Fedorov, and many thanks to @founder for the generous gift. This shows how Telegram users benefit from direct ownership over their names. $350M worth of Telegram usernames and anonymous numbers have been sold in the last 18 months.

The newest versions of Telegram allow you to see when and for how much a username was sold. To check it out, you can go to my channel’s profile and tap on @pavel or @snow. A few minutes ago, I bought @paul on Fragment for 10,000 TON — to prevent more people from giving me generous gifts