US Teen Sells Telegram Coding Trophy for $20,000; Durov Cheers

A US high school student turned a free coding trophy into roughly $20,000 by selling his Telegram Gift NFT for 15,000 Grams. Pavel Durov held up the transaction as seed funding.

The sale price was about 40 times the average prize value that Telegram had guaranteed. Durov posted the result on his channel and urged other winners to go build something.

How a Free Prize Became $20,000

Jonathan He earned gold at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Durov ranked him seventh globally.

Instead of a standard medal or cash prize, the reward was an Algorithm Cup—a digital collectible on TON, the blockchain underpinning Gram. Winners may sell theirs to anyone.

Jonathan He competes for Team USA and works as an engineering intern at trading firm Liquid. After Day 1, he was in fifth place with 246 points out of 300, according to co-founder Franklyn Wang.

One of our interns is currently fifth in the world.

Jonathan He, a Liquid engineering intern and member of Team USA, is sitting in 5th place after Day 1 of the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics, the world’s most prestigious competitive programming competition.

He… pic.twitter.com/2ub9OK5CB9

— Franklyn Wang (@frank_liquid) August 12, 2026

Telegram promised the 235 medalists a total of $117,000 in Algorithm Cups. That averages roughly $500 per cup. One cup sold for 40 times that.

Gram (GRAM), the token rebranded from Toncoin in June, traded near $1.36 on Sunday. That makes 15,000 Grams worth about $20,400.

Durov Calls It Seed Money

In a Sunday Telegram post, Pavel Durov highlighted the sale and called on other winners to put their Grams to similar use.

“…20 years ago, $20K was enough for me to launch my first company. Within months, it had reached 1M users and raised $12M at a $60M valuation,” he wrote.

That company was VKontakte. Durov left the Russian social network in 2014, then built Telegram, the company that handed out this year’s cups.

He now buys these collectibles himself. In June, he paid 7,500 Grams for a Plush Pepe NFT, his third such purchase since December 2025. The teenager’s cup fetched twice as many Grams.

Gram has lost 56% of its value over the past year. A Telegram collectible still cleared $20,000. The buyer and the marketplace remain undisclosed.