Telegram founder Pavel Durov has announced that a native, non-custodial Gram Wallet will be rolled out to all Telegram apps this summer, targeting more than 1 billion users with instant crypto transactions at no fees.
Gram, Telegram’s native cryptocurrency, rose about 7% on the news.
The coin is still far from its peak and is down 88% from May levels.
Pavel Durov has a big promise that he must fulfill before the summer is over. Telegram’s founder announced Tuesday that the messaging app — think WhatsApp but bigger, with more than 1 billion monthly active users — will roll out a native non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet in every version of the app, offering instant, free crypto transactions for everyone.
The crypto wallet is being built to support Telegram’s native crypto, Gram, formerly known as Toncoin. A non-prison wallet means that users hold the keys to their own money. Think of it like carrying cash instead of using a bank account: no one can freeze it, confiscate it, or block a transaction without your permission.
The existing Wallet bot within Telegram (@wallet) – which already has more than 150 million registered users – runs partially in custodial mode, meaning a company holds the keys on your behalf. Durov’s new wallet would change that.
There is an important difference between what Durov announced and what Telegram already has. The existing @wallet is a bot built and operated by The Open Platform – a separate company, not Telegram itself. The new wallet would be native to the app, meaning it would be baked into every version of Telegram rather than something users have to find and activate.
🌍 This summer will see the largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history.
⚡️Instant zero-fee crypto transactions for over a billion users are about to become a reality.
We’re bringing a native, non-custodial Gram wallet to every Telegram app! 💎
The @wallet bot also defaults to retention mode unless you intentionally switch to the self-management layer; the new wallet would not be in escrow from the start. Several details have not yet been announced: whether the new wallet will replace @wallet or coexist, what assets it will support besides Gram, and how key management will work at scale for people who have never touched crypto before.
Durov called it “the largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history.” At least the math holds up in theory. Metamask, the most widely used self-custody wallet in crypto, has tens of millions of users. Nothing in the crypto space has ever launched with a billion users on day one.
Gram – the native token of The Open Network, the blockchain that powers Telegram’s crypto ecosystem – rose about 7% after the announcement, climbing back above $1.52 on a market cap of $4.18 billion, from a low of almost $1.36 the day before. That partially offset a heavy 25% decline the currency recorded through most of July, although it still ended the day well ahead of a recovery.
Gram, Toncoin, price data. Image: Trading view
To understand why this matters, you need the backstory. Telegram created the original network in 2018 and raised $1.7 billion from investors for a token it wanted to call Gram. The SEC then sued, arguing that these tokens were unregistered securities.
Telegram settled in 2020, returning $1.2 billion to investors, paying an $18.5 million civil penalty and walking away from the project. Community developers kept the chain alive as Toncoin for years, until Durov took control again in 2026.
In June, the rebrand from Toncoin to Gram went live after an 81% community vote. This restored the name Durov originally had in mind in 2018. Today’s wallet announcement is the next step in what he has dubbed “Make TON Great Again.”
The TON blockchain has just been upgraded and is now 10x faster.
Block rate increased by 6×.
Transactions are now instant, within a second.
This was step 1 of 7 to create TON Great Again (MTONGA).
Next step: reduce the already low transaction costs by 6x.
A built-in wallet means the average Telegram user can send crypto the same way they send a text message: no exchange account required, no bank transfer, no middleman cutting off a percentage. Small businesses and retailers also get a payment channel with a reach of a billion people and zero transaction fees that no card network can match. For investors, the picture is more complicated.
If you want to buy the news, you may want to look at the bigger picture and be prepared to put your tokens away for a while.
Gram, Toncoin, price data. Image: Trading view
Gram’s 200-day exponential moving average – a long-term trend indicator that averages price data over the past 200 days and indicates whether a coin is in a sustained up or down trend – is well above the current price, confirming that the broader trend is still bearish.
The all-time high of $8.25, achieved in June 2024 during Telegram’s tap-to-earn gaming craze, is another matter entirely. The more immediate milestone – the peak of $2.89 from May 2026, when Telegram first announced its acquisition of the network – would require an 88% rally from the current price.
No launch date beyond “this summer” has been given yet.
Daily debriefing Newsletter
Start every day with today’s top news stories, plus original articles, a podcast, videos and more.
