I have a Telegram account because a lot of people I know outside the USA always were asking to connect on Telegram. Many don't like Discord, and they don't like Meta's messenger.
I don't know a lot about Durov's troubles, but I have long admired his ability to build and run Telegram — which has 900 million users — with a team of just 20-25 people (compared to Twitter/X's 1400 employees) and then seamlessly doing what Musk talks about by not only incorporating a blockchain/crypto token into the platform, but seamlessly adding a within-platform crypto wallet.
I have little doubt that Durov... and his genius brother... skate on the edges of sketchy practices, but I also think they annoy a bunch of people by just DOING things, rather than endlessly talking about them and "planning" them.
Is Telegram the "Wild Wild West?" Probably... I mostly use it purely to communicate with people outside the US, and it seems pretty secure. I'm told there are some really shady groups on there, though.