Telegram CEO Detained Over Alleged Failure to Stop Crime on App

There's a popular messaging app across Wall Street and in the crypto industry, and that is Telegram. That company is now questioning the grounds for France's detention of its CEO and co-founder Paul Durov was taken into custody at a Paris airport over the weekend on suspicion of failing to take steps to prevent criminal use of the platform. Joining us now is Bloomberg Technology co-host Caroline Hyde, who has been following the story closely. It is, I think it's fair to say, a strange one at that. This is a platform that has really got into the crosshairs of multiple governments around the world because of the way that people communicate on it, particularly around riots and other things that might stir social unrest. What exactly happened here? Now, why was he detained? This is much more about the protection of children versus sexual abuse in particular. This is seems to be the particular formation of France, the area, the agency that has decided that they want to be holding him for at least until Wednesday, whether or not they indeed bring charges, whether they let him go free or whether or not he becomes and witness to an investigation that's more deeply into the protection and ultimately of children against sexual abuse. They feel like many a government that perhaps Telegram is not as active at protecting the sort of content that was on the social platform. Now from the company itself. They're saying, look, it is not the responsibility of the CEO and the co-founders as to what is actually said on the social media platform that they do have ways and means in which they take down calls to violence, for example, and they use I along with individuals to be monitoring what's said across the platform. But more broadly, they are far more pro free speech and therefore a lot more has been said, and many would say in the U.K., for example, Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, has been very outspoken against Telegram in the way in which they feel some of the actions taken and riots stirred in the U.K. Anti-immigration riots were indeed posted on Telegram. And I also want to make a correction here. The CEO's name is indeed Pavel Durov. And, you know, if you think about the other people who are involved in the larger story around Telegram, what's really at stake here? Who are the founders and who are the investors, the founders, the brothers. And in many ways, Pavel himself has been quoted as being ultimately the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia. Back in 2006, him and his brother set up what was an incredibly popular social media platform. Now, because of their popularity in the U.S., they did end up becoming rather focused upon by the Russian government, shall we say. And they exited Russia fled, in fact, over all because they felt that the ability to have freedom of speech in Russia was curtailed. They moved. He's now basically based in to buy, but also a citizen of France. We don't know as to whether or not he's actually shirked his citizenship of Russia. More broadly, Russia has spoken out against the detention of the Russian citizen thus far, but him and his brother set up telegram then in about 20 1314, when they were based here in the United States, in in Dubai more broadly, and they were then focused in on again, making sure that this was whether it was end to end encrypted. But it's a safe space to be having conversations. Perhaps there a little bit more on adjudicated as versus other social media, but they have funded this. They he's meant to be worth about nine or $10 billion in and of himself. But they do have a crypto related token, which in many ways has got a lot of money from certain key investors. All right. Well, let's talk about that. We only have about a minute left with you. Crypto is a crucial part of this story. Tell us a little bit more about the token and maybe some of the investors involved. The open network is what it's called. It's not actually directly held by telegram, but it was sort of set up an alliance and a partnership with Telegram. Dan Morehead of Pantera is a big investor. They say it's their biggest ownership is in Tom the token is for hard about $3 billion was wiped out It's the 10th biggest crypto and indeed Telegram's success is ultimately directly in line with its own success. It's about bringing blockchain and crypto within the social media platform. In many ways, what Elon Musk has been aiming to do is to build the ultimate large social media platform that we see over in China, like a complete use of whether it's payments and also chat and whether it's bookings more broadly. That is seemingly the way in which Telegram was seen.