When does a like turn into money?

⭐ On average, Pavel Durov is set to earn between 320,000,000 and 500,000,000 Telegram Stars (around $8,000,000) just from selling the new test gifts in the auction. And this is – attention – without counting the revenue from selling phone numbers. So these figures are, to put it mildly, incomplete. You could say this is just “pocket change” that happens to demonstrate how universal Telegram’s monetization system has become.

The funniest part is that this entire “immodest” income appeared literally out of thin air – from the simplest paid reactions in Durov’s personal channel. Stars are Telegram’s internal currency. You can place them under any post, unless the author disabled reactions. They cost almost nothing: about 1.64 to 1.7 rubles per star. By modern internet standards, it’s not even a donation, it’s a micro-grain of a donation. But Durov has nearly 11 million followers, and if each one opened the channel, blinked, tapped a like and moved on, the total grows much faster.

No wonder the number of reactions has exceeded 4.2 million. Which means even the most minimalistic post like “test”, “renamed the channel” or “update coming” automatically brings him money. And not virtual star tokens, but real dollars.

For a dollar billionaire, seven million rubles is like finding a forgotten coffee cup in the car: pleasant, but life doesn’t change.

Yet the situation itself speaks louder. If earlier monetization was mostly for bloggers, influencers and those who actively engage their audience, now even the platform’s founder earns money simply because users tap a tiny shiny star.

✏️ The new reality is simple: if you have 11 million subscribers, even purely technical announcements turn into a revenue stream. This is no longer content monetization. This is monetization of attention in its purest form. And judging by the pace, the starry sky over Telegram is only beginning to brighten.