Pavel Durov uses Bitcoin to neutralize the Telegram ban in Russia

Russia officially banned Telegram this week, but the encrypted messaging app is fighting government censors using bitcoin.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said Tuesday that he has begun providing bitcoin grants to groups and organizations that operate virtual private networks (VPNs) and other proxy servers that help users circumvent the nationwide ban enforced by Roskomnadzor. 

“To support Internet freedom in Russia and other countries, I provide bitcoin grants to individuals and companies that operate socks5 and VPN proxies. For this purpose, I am happy to donate millions of dollars, and I hope that others will follow my example,” Durov wrote about his initiative, which he called “Digital Resistance.”

“For us, this was a natural decision. We promised our users complete confidentiality and would rather cease to exist than break this promise,” Durov wrote on his Telegram channel.

A Russian court approved the banlast week, citing the fact that Telegram refused to provide the Russian intelligence service with encryption keys that the government could be used to monitor user messages. Officials say they need such access so they can investigate and prevent terrorist operations, but the company believes it would violate the privacy of its Russian users.

Telegram said there has been no noticeable decline in the number of its users since the ban took effect, but the same cannot be said for other services whose IP addresses have crossed Roskomnadzor's path. 

According to Reuters, the Russian regulator has blocked 18 subnets and millions of IP addresses, including the IP addresses of retailers and banking providers owned by Google and Amazon, in an attempt to prevent Telegram from using these cloud services to circumvent the ban.

According to https://www.ccn.com