Khabib's NFT Papakhi Grew More Than 10x in Price

In short: what happened to Khabib's papakhi

The papakha is a traditional headwear of the Caucasus, and for Khabib Nurmagomedov it was never an accessory — it was the full stop at the end of a fight. He put it on after a win, and the cameras caught exactly that gesture, until it grew as recognisable as the name itself.

The collection is built on that image.

The tokens were issued on TON, the network the Telegram team started and which has developed on its own since. The tie to the messenger stayed close: the wallet sits inside the app, and collectible gifts move onto the very same chain. That is why the papakhi story reads to a Telegram user less like a crypto market report and more like news from the next room. The “Send a gift” button leads into the same circuit, just from another door.

Ownership here works differently from what the word “picture” suggests. The chain holds a record of who keeps an item, and only its owner can change that by transferring the token. The image file sits apart and the token points at it — hence the eternal “I just downloaded your papakha” argument. What downloads is the picture, not the record. What trades is the record. Collectible Telegram gifts behave the same way after the move: the item stays in the profile, the chain keeps a line about its owner.

Why the collection grew 10x

A tenfold move does not come out of sympathy for a fighter. Four things stand behind it, and all four repeat in every collection that takes off.

• A capped run. The release cannot be reprinted: however many items went out, that is all there will ever be.
• A recognisable image. The papakha needs no explaining — a sporting biography known to millions stands behind it.
• Quick resale. A lot is listed on a marketplace and moves to a new owner without contracts or middlemen.
• Interest in the network. TON pulls along everything issued on it, and collections rise with the ecosystem.

Then the arithmetic of the secondary market takes over. A collection is priced not by the average ticket but by the floor — the cheapest lot listed at this moment. Owners pull their cheap positions off sale and the floor climbs, even if the week produced few actual deals. That is why “the collection grew tenfold” and “every owner made ten times their money” are two different statements.

Prices spread out inside a single release: items with rare traits go for more than ordinary ones, and ordinary ones can sit for months with no buyer at all.

That is the first correction to keep in mind while reading any headline about multiples.

The second one is about currency, and it gets remembered less often. Lots trade for coin, and the coin has a rate of its own: a collection can gain in TON while losing in dollars, the two moves stack, and not always in the owner's favour.

The third is about the exit. Until a lot is sold, the growth lives on screen only: converting it into money takes a matching buyer with coin in a wallet. A loud collection finds one within hours; a quiet one may never gather a queue.

💎 What papakhi and Telegram gifts share

Telegram gifts are simpler than a marketplace collection, yet they run on the same logic. A user takes a gift for Stars and sends it to someone else — the item settles in the recipient's profile and stays visible to profile visitors. Stars work here as the internal currency of the messenger with its own XTR code: bot purchases run on them too, and the rules are laid out in the Telegram documentation on paying with Stars.

The difference between a regular gift and a collectible one matters more than the shelf suggests. A regular one lives inside the messenger: it is given, displayed in the profile, hidden from strangers — and it never reaches an outside market. A collectible release is capped in supply, and it may be moved to an NFT on TON. After the move the item lands in the owner's wallet and trades under marketplace rules. Which item belongs to which type is covered in the Telegram gifts guide.

From here the two doors into digital collectibles are easier to compare row by row.

The row that matters most is the second from the bottom. Entry into a collection is set by the market, and in a heated release it starts where an ordinary person drops out. A gift costs what its denomination costs: 15 Stars is 21₽, and the price does not depend on how rare the release happens to be. One appetite for digital things, two doors with very different ticket prices.

Hence the different crowds at the two shelves. People come to a marketplace with money and a calculation, and to a friend's profile with a reason: a birthday, an apology, a thank-you for help. The first cares about deal history, the second about whether the thing will be liked. They share one trait: the purchase stays with the recipient for good and cannot be used up like an ordinary service.

That is why gifts caught on in the messenger faster than any other digital purchase. The collectible part of the market grew on top of that habit.

The second door is no worse: collectible gifts live on the same chain.

How to buy an NFT in the Telegram ecosystem

The crypto route is longer than the headlines imply, but it is walkable. Four steps take you from an empty wallet to a deal on a marketplace.

A note on step three: every venue has its own rules and its own set of collections, so a lot on one shelf is not always visible on another. Fragment stands apart as the official venue of the ecosystem, where settlement runs in coin. A wallet takes minutes: three working ways are collected in the TON wallet instructions. The network's coin, by the way, is now named GRAM — that is how the TON network's own site lists it, though the familiar “TON” has not gone anywhere.

Five minutes of checking pay for themselves before a first purchase. Collections get faked: a copy with the same name and the same picture is listed below the original, and an inattentive buyer walks away with nothing. Match the collection address against the project's official pages rather than against the description of the lot. And never sign transactions from links in private messages: a signature in a wallet moves money, it does not open a page.

Anyone who wants a gift rather than a position in a portfolio needs none of those four steps.

Is it worth investing in NFT papakhi

Briefly: as an asset, with great care; as a thing you like, for as much as you can spare. The arguments of both sides are worth laying side by side.

The right column outweighs the left, and for a collectible market that is normal. The price rests on the appetite of the next buyer, and appetite shifts faster than news comes out. A collection can sit in a wallet for a year without a single deal — formally it is worth something, practically it will not turn into money. Which is exactly why seasoned buyers take such things for the thing itself and treat growth as a pleasant accident.

The second trap is treating paper profit as real. While a lot sits on the shelf, its price rests on the assumption that a buyer will show up at that number. Pulling cheap positions off sale is easy, and the floor climbs in plain sight although nobody got any richer. A closed deal is what shows the real price, and the list of closed deals is always shorter than the list of listings.

Look at what actually sold and for how much, not at the shelf.

A gift paid in rubles avoids those risks for one reason: nothing in it depends on resale.

⭐ A gift in rubles instead of a bet on growth

The simplest way into digital collectibles is not a marketplace but the “Send a gift” button. The gift is addressed to the recipient's @username, arrives in their profile and stays there. No wallet, no seed phrase and no network fee anywhere on that path.

Inside the app Stars go through the App Store or Google Play, the stores keep about a third, and a star ends up at $0.019–0.021. In STARSEi it starts from $0.015 with a minimum order of 50 ⭐, paid by SBP, SberPay, cards, TON or USDT, and delivered on the official Telegram flow — the same one used inside the app. Orders are processed automatically, usually in ~11 seconds. Gifts are separate: they are paid for in rubles, with no need to stock up on Stars.

The choice between the two doors comes down to the goal. For a thing in a profile, take the gift: it arrives at once, costs its denomination and asks nothing about exchange rates. For a position you intend to resell, take the marketplace with all its fees and risks.

Releases pulled from the shelf are reachable too: how to find and send them is covered in the article on gifts that are gone from the app.

What to take away from this

The papakhi story is a good excuse to look at digital collectibles soberly. The tenfold move happened on a capped run and a recognisable image, it is measured by the floor of the listings, and collecting it in money works only while demand is alive. The same mechanic governs collectible Telegram gifts and explains why some releases climb while others lie dead. The difference between the two doors is the ticket price and the number of steps.

One asks for a wallet, coin and patience; the other fits into a button.

There is a separate use in news like this: it shows how quickly a digital thing turns into an object of trade. For the messenger that means one thing — a gift in a profile now reads not only as a sign of attention but as a record with a price on it.

If the plan is simply to make someone's day, start with the second door.

This article is a reference, not advice: the decision to buy digital assets stays with you. Prices and rates float, and the final amount is shown on the order screen before payment. The service follows Telegram rules and delivers purchases through the official flow of the messenger.