Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country. Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russiaâs equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russiaâs fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Googleâs Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbesâ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the âMark Zuckerberg of Russia.â The next bit isnât clear, but Durov reportedly claimed that his resignation, dated March 21st, was an April Foolsâ prank. TechCrunch implies that it was a matter of principle, but itâs hard to be clear on the wheres, whos and whys. Similarly, on April 17th, the Moscow Times quoted Durov as saying that he quit the company after being pressured to reveal account details about Ukrainians protesting the then-president Viktor Yanukovych. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had carried out a similar exercise in 2017 in a matter related to circulation of messages through WhatsApp. That hurt tech stocks. For the past few weeks, the 10-year yield has traded between 1.72% and 2%, as traders moved into the bond for safety when Russia headlines were uglyâand out of it when headlines improved. Now, the yield is touching its pandemic-era high. If the yield breaks above that level, that could signal that itâs on a sustainable path higher. Higher long-dated bond yields make future profits less valuableâand many tech companies are valued on the basis of profits forecast for many years in the future.
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