In brief
Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced a native non-custodial Gram wallet is rolling out to all Telegram apps this summer, targeting more than 1 billion users with instant, zero-fee crypto transactions.
Gram, Telegram's native crypto, jumped roughly 7% on the news.
The coin is still a long way offs from its highs, and 88% down from May levels.
Pavel Durov has a big promise to keep before summer ends. Telegram's founder announced on Tuesday that the messaging app—think WhatsApp but larger, with over 1 billion monthly active users—will roll out a native non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet across every version of the app, offering instant, zero-fee crypto transactions to all of them.The crypto wallet is being built to support Telegram’s native crypto, Gram—formerly known as Toncoin. A non-custodial wallet means users hold the keys to their own funds. Think of it like carrying cash instead of using a bank account: nobody can freeze it, seize it, or block a transaction without your permission.The existing Wallet bot inside Telegram (@wallet)—which already has over 150 million registered users—runs partly in custodial mode, meaning a company holds the keys on your behalf. Durov's new wallet would change that.There's a key 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 baked into every version of Telegram rather than something users have to find and activate.
