Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Announces Native Gram Crypto Wallet For All Users: Details

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has announced that a native, non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet will roll out across every version of the messaging app this summer, targeting the platform's more than 1 billion monthly active users with instant, zero-fee crypto transactions. Durov described the rollout as the largest deployment of a non-custodial wallet in history. The wallet will support Gram, Telegram's native cryptocurrency, formerly known as Toncoin.

What has Durov announced?

Taking to social media, Durov called the move the largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history, promising instant, zero-fee crypto transactions for over a billion users. A non-custodial wallet means users hold their own private keys, so funds cannot be frozen, seized, or blocked by a third party without the user's permission, unlike wallets where a company holds custody on a user's behalf.

How this differs from Telegram's existing wallet?

Telegram already has a crypto wallet bot called @wallet, run by a separate company, The Open Platform, which counts more than 150 million registered users. However, that wallet operates in custodial mode by default, and users must actively switch to its self-custody option. The wallet Durov announced would instead be built directly into the app itself, non-custodial from the outset, rather than requiring users to seek out and activate a separate bot. Several details remain unclear, including whether the new wallet will replace or run alongside @wallet, which assets it will support beyond Gram, and how key management will work for a mainstream user base largely unfamiliar with crypto.

Gram, the native token of The Open Network blockchain that powers Telegram's crypto ecosystem, rose roughly 7 percent following the announcement, climbing back above $1.52 at a market capitalisation of $4.18 billion after trading near $1.36 a day earlier.

Telegram originally built the network in 2018 and raised $1.7 billion from investors for a planned token called Gram, before the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued the company, arguing the tokens were unregistered securities. Telegram settled the case in 2020, returned $1.2 billion to investors, paid an $18.5 million civil penalty, and exited the project, after which independent developers kept the network running under the name Toncoin. Durov returned to lead the project in 2026, and the token was renamed back to Gram in June following a community vote.

No specific launch date has been announced beyond a timeline of this summer.

Published on: Wednesday, July 22, 2026, 11:07 AM IST