Telegram founder Pavel Durov said Tuesday that the messaging app will roll out a native non-custodial crypto wallet across every version of Telegram before summer ends, extending instant, zero-fee crypto transactions to a platform with more than 1 billion monthly active users.
The wallet is being built to support Gram, Telegram’s native crypto asset. In a non-custodial setup, users keep control of their own keys instead of handing that control to a company.
Telegram already has an in-app crypto product, the Wallet bot at @wallet, which has more than 150 million registered users. That product operates partly in custodial mode, meaning a company holds the keys on the user’s behalf. Durov’s newly announced wallet would shift that model by starting as non-custodial from the outset.
The distinction goes beyond custody. The current @wallet product is a bot built and operated by The Open Platform, a separate company rather than Telegram itself. The new wallet, by contrast, would be native to Telegram, embedded into every version of the app instead of being something users need to locate and activate on their own.
Durov calls it the biggest self-custody wallet rollout ever
In a post on X, Durov wrote: “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 reality. We're bringing a native non-custodial Gram wallet to every Telegram app!”
The existing @wallet bot defaults to custodial mode unless users deliberately move to its self-custody layer. The new wallet would begin as non-custodial by default.
Several points remain unannounced. Durov has not said whether the new product will replace @wallet or coexist with it, which assets it will support beyond Gram, or how Telegram plans to handle key management at scale for users who have never used crypto before.
He described the launch as “the largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history.” On reach alone, that argument is plausible. MetaMask, one of the most widely used self-custody wallets in crypto, has tens of millions of users. No crypto product has launched with a 1 billion-user base on day one.
Gram rose about 7% after the announcement
Gram, the native token of The Open Network blockchain that powers Telegram’s crypto ecosystem, rose roughly 7% after the announcement. The token climbed back above $1.52, up from lows near $1.36 the day before, and reached a market capitalization of $4.18 billion.
The rebound only partly offset the coin’s 25% slide through most of July, and it still finished the day far from a full recovery.
From Gram in 2018 to a return in 2026
The wallet push lands against a long and complicated Telegram backstory.
Telegram created the original network in 2018 and raised $1.7 billion from investors for a token it planned to call Gram. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later sued, arguing those tokens were unregistered securities.
Telegram settled in 2020, returned $1.2 billion to investors, paid an $18.5 million civil penalty, and exited the project. Community developers kept the chain running for years under the Toncoin name until Durov retook control in 2026.
In June, Toncoin was rebranded back to Gram after an 81% community vote, restoring the name Durov originally wanted in 2018. The wallet announcement now stands as the next move in what he has called “Make TON Great Again.”
Durov wrote in April that the TON blockchain had been upgraded and was now 10× faster, with block rate up 6× and transactions reduced to instant, subsecond finality. He called that step one of seven in the “Make TON Great Again” plan and said the next step would be to cut already low transaction fees by another 6×.
A built-in wallet could change how users move value inside Telegram
If the wallet is embedded directly in Telegram, sending crypto could start to resemble sending a text message. Users would not need an exchange account, a bank transfer, or an intermediary taking a cut of the payment.
For small businesses and retailers, that also creates a payment rail with 1 billion-person reach and zero transaction fees. The original report said no card network can match that combination.
That does not make the investment case simple.
Price remains below the long-term trend and key highs
For traders looking to buy the news around Gram, the report noted that the broader picture still matters and that holders may need to stay in position for some time.
Gram’s 200-day exponential moving average remains above the current price. In the report, that long-term trend indicator signaled that the token is still in a broader bearish trend.
The token’s all-time high of $8.25, set in June 2024 during Telegram’s tap-to-earn gaming frenzy, is much farther away. A nearer reference point is the $2.89 peak from May 2026, when Telegram first announced its takeover of the network. From the reported current price, reaching that level again would require an 88% rally.
Telegram has not provided a launch date beyond saying the wallet will arrive “this summer.”