A Telegram Gift NFT tied to a coding competition prize sold for approximately $20,000, significantly exceeding the average value guaranteed by the platform. Jonathan He, a US high school student competing for Team USA, won the Algorithm Cup digital collectible at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics and subsequently sold it for 15,000 Grams tokens.
Telegram promised 235 medalists a combined $117,000 in Algorithm Cups, averaging close to $500 per cup. He's sale price of 15,000 Grams—valued at roughly $20,400 based on Gram trading near $1.36—represents approximately 40 times the average prize value.
He is an engineering intern at trading firm Liquid and finished fifth after the first day of competition with 246 points out of 300. The Algorithm Cup is a digital collectible hosted on TON, the blockchain supporting Gram, and can be sold to anyone.
Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, publicized the sale on his Telegram channel, framing it as startup capital for young developers. He noted that $20,000 was sufficient for him to launch VKontakte 20 years ago, which reached 1 million users and raised $12 million at a $60 million valuation before he left the company in 2014 to build Telegram.
Durov has been purchasing Telegram collectibles himself, including a Plush Pepe NFT for 7,500 Grams in June, his third such purchase since December 2025. The buyer and marketplace for He's sale remain undisclosed. Gram has declined 56% in value over the past year.
