Part I. Andrei Grachev: A Hungry Uzbek Falcon
Note: This collection of notes from my research for "The Telegram Labyrinth" identifies the defensive financial measures Pavel Durov has taken between May 2025 and December 2025. Most of the information originated in Russian social media; for example, online articles, Telegram messages, items in PCNews.ru, and VKontakte pages. I collected my notes beginning in 2024 and continue to sort and resort them. I am adding to them as I come across interesting information. Remember, the statements in this essay are from my notes and should be viewed as working hypotheses. Verify before you trust any of my observations. These are speculations I captured as I was writing “The Telegram Labyrinth” and as I draft my 2026 lectures to cyber investigators for 2026. Keep the disclaimers in mind as you review this briefing document. This essay is based on public filings, press releases, and open‑source research; where I move beyond those documents, I try to label my opinions. I have also used a more informal approach in the writing for this online collection; for example, the bird motif.
Part One: The Uzbeki Falcon Takes Flight
Avoiding Prison for Cargo Theft
More than a decade ago, Andrei Grachev sat facing the Moscow investigator. The Uzbeki organized a theft of cargo. The trial and a fine evaporated. A couple of Grachev's connections made phone calls. A political influencer pulled strings.
The investigator stared at the dismissal documents, then the awkward 28 year old Uzbeki, and with the trademarked indifference of a Kremlin bureaucrat, stamped the release document. Grachev avoided arrest and a fine.
Uzbekis are fascinated with raptors. A Xorazm lapar (song) brings the falcon symbol to life:
I would be a hunting falcon,
Flying above the wide steppe.
Not a sparrow of the courtyard,
But a bird that chooses its prey.
Upon arrival in Moscow, Grachev was no falcon; he was a sparrow, an insignificant one. He lacked clout. He had the status of a 20-something from Uzbekistan out to make his fortune. Grachev knew he would become falcon in the lapar. My view of his moves in Moscow suggest he would be a hunting falcon, a bird that chooses its target, not the quarry. A predator.
This hustling Uzbek was not part of the Russian educational or financial elite. He had graduated from Tashkent University of Information Technologies in Uzbekistan and earned his MBA from Orenburg State University. Orenburg is located in the southern Ural region of Russia on the border with Kazakhstan. Kazy, a horse meat sausage popular among some graduate students in Orenburg, was hard to find in Moscow when Grachev took a job at Ulmart.ru, the Russian version of Amazon. (While studying for his MBA, he worked at Attenta and M-Logistic.) He learned about shipping and moving boxes.
He revealed an important insight about his decision making. He was involved in a cargo theft but escaped without a criminal record. Grachev knew he had scrub the cargo theft from his bio. He entered MESI or Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics, and Informatics. It offered a post-graduate instruction in financial engineering. Plus, MESI offered remote-learning online classes just like the US-based University of Phoenix. Another bonus: Graduates from MESI were known as up-and-comers, the real wheeler-dealers the Russian financial system wanted.
Grachev continued to work for Ulmart until 2017. He jumped to Crypsis Blockchain Holding. participated in early stage ventures; for example, Shoptimizer. Grachev landed a membership to RACIB
He launched Export.Online. He talked a colleague (Vladimir Petov) to join him and Natalya Podgoretskaya in this venture to blend shipping, crypto, and blockchain technology. Putting his MESI training to work, he registered Export.Online in the British Virgin Islands. Grachev relied on Perov for administrative technology and Podgoretskaya for operations. Grachev's was recognized as a wheeler dealer who knew about exploiting registration methods that crossed jurisdictions.
The Export.Online Play, 2017-2018
Grachev wrapped a failing shipping business with the speculative hype of an initial coin offering. He raised approximately $157,000 from Stepan Ermakov's family investment firm in Saint Petersburg.
Grachev's use of a shell and a big vision became a road map for his subsequent ventures. Export.online would "revolutionize" global trade. To participate, shippers would buy Grachev's crypto currency. Export.online's payments would be made in this crypto. The coins could be sold in an exchange. If the "value" of Export.online's crypto went up, the payout would be higher. But a crypto cold front swept in and the "value" of his crypto cratered. Ermakov demanded a refund. He threatened legal action. He talked to crypto journalists about Grachev's methods. Grachev pivoted.
Taking a page from his MESI lessons, Grachev suspended Export.Online. He asserted that he was in the midst of a "strategic realignment." He raised more money and pushed the transactions through a system set up by Perov. That money allegedly vanished.
Spotting a Digital Wave
When Grachev left Export.Online in 2018, took a management job at the Chinese-owned Huobi Moscow office of Huobi Global, the international crypto company. While at Huobi Moscow, he was involved in setting up Digital Wave Finance in Switzerland to handle Huobi Moscow's high-frequency crypto trades. He registered a high-frequency trading company called Vroom, later renamed VRM.
He secured the role of vice president of Trading at RACIB (the Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, AI and Blockchain). His business status, his role at Huobi Moscow, and his RACIB work made him functionally untouchable. Going after the head of a large regional crypto operation owned by Chinese interests created a point of friction for Stepan Ermakov, who wanted his money back from his brush with Grachev. Plus, with Grachev as a member of the RACIB leadership placed another speed bump to those who alleged Grachev defrauded them. Grachev flew around legal bullets. He had status in Moscow as a crypto financial engineer, not an Uzbek managing freight shipments.
Grachev spotted an opportunity for another money maker. In 2020, Grachev founded Darley Technologies, also in Switzerland. The partners in that firm were the Swiss brothers Marco and Remo Schweizer; a quant trader named Clement Florentin; Vladimir Demin, his successor as Huobi Moscow's CEO and fellow RACIB member, and Michael Rendchen. (Rendchen was a trader at IMC Trading before joining Grachev's group.) The Darley operation served as a liquidity provider and technical laboratory for options and complex derivative development and use. At this time, Grachev was the visible operator. Perov was the behind-the-scenes technical and operations muscle. The approach was a Silicon Valley crash-and-code apartment, complete with dogs, laptops, and Hüppen wrappers.
In 2018, Grachev used VRM, an acronym for Virtual Reserve Management as a component of a new operation, Digital Wave Finance. This company was the "brand" Grachev used to present to the crypto believers as the premier HFT crypto trading system. (In Moscow, VRM also was known as Black Ocean to signal that privacy was part of Grachev's approach to crypto trading.)
Four years later, DWF Labs Pte. Ltd. was incorporated in Singapore. And then in 2025 Grachev set up a market-making company named DWF MaaS was set up. Registered in United Arab Emirate, MaaS was an acronym for the firm's crypto marketing making services. The trading technology behind these firms was based on the business operations and management software implemented by Perov and powered by the Schweizer's HFT software machinery.
To recap, the structures that Grachev erected and operated were:
- Digital Wave Finance. The company uses its own capital for high-frequency crypto trading. It is not a fund, a VC firm, or a bank.
- DWF Labs. This is the entity that "invests" in projects. It functions as a mash up of VC and a market maker.
- DWF MaaS. MaaS stands for "Market Making as a Service." This is a newer entity (appearing in SEC filings in late 2025 and 2026) used specifically for institutional contracts and equity deals.
Start, Drop, Reposition
What does this review of Grachev reveal about his approach to business?
- He is willing to use his connection to avoid fines and jail time.
- His mental set up allows him to spot potentially lucrative crypto niches and exploit them.
- He is quick to abandon projects when they do not yield the results he seeks.
In Part II, I will add some to Grachev's spotting an opportunity in Dubai with the Telegram / TON Foundation.