Telegram seems to be interested in money and power because they've turned down offers from Moxie (the creator of TextSecure and a well-known cryptographer) to join forces. There's no reason to do that unless they were interested in money or power more than security.

I didn't say TextSecure is completely safe. I said Telegram has been demonstrated to be broken.

Telegram is prone to passive listening because their design doesn't prevent it. There's nothing stopping someone from MITM'ing every Telegram secret chat when it's first initiated. It's in the design.

Their contest means nothing, because due to the way the contest is designed, it's impossible to MITM or other side channel attacks like timing attacks. These are the real attack vectors, yet the format of the contest prevents anyone from employing them.