Most Influential: Pavel Durov

As CEO of billion-user messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov may stand as the most pivotal figure in bona fide mass adoption of cryptocurrency for many observers.

This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.

By embedding the wallet for the TON blockchain into its popular messaging app, Telegram aims to remove some of the most cumbersome elements of interacting with crypto, such as remembering seed phrases and registering on an exchange. In short, Durov wants to make Telegram the biggest mass-market crypto on-ramp, offering digital asset services through an interface that's as simple as sending a message.

In 2025, Telegram garnered attention from no less a prospective investor than the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock. Telegram raised $1.7 billion via convertible bonds in a tender offer, which closed in late May, that drew the interest of investors including BlackRock, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and hedge fund Citadel.

Durov is known as a staunch advocate of privacy and free speech, which formed part of his motivation for the creation of Telegram in 2014. However, his reputation sometimes precedes him when it comes to law enforcement agencies. In August of 2024, French authorities confiscated his passport and imposed a travel ban on him following preliminary charges related to complicity in drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud through Telegram. When he recovered his passport in March this year, the TON token jumped 20% on the news.

While Durov and Telegram, in general, may remain controversial, according to some observers, 2025 also saw the app demonstrate a determination to crack down on unlawful use of its platform, which would otherwise tarnish it with the brush of crime, fraud, and so on. This year, Telegram shut down illicit crypto-centric marketplaces Xinbi and Haowang, formerly Huione, in partnership with blockchain sleuths Elliptic. The two marketplaces were thought to have processed transactions worth over $40 billion combined on Telegram since 2021.

• As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
• GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
• Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

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