Pavel Durov says Telegram will add a native Gram wallet this summer for more than 1 billion users

Telegram founder Pavel Durov says the app will get a built-in Gram crypto wallet this summer, with instant transactions available to more than 1 billion users. For high-risk PSPs, the relevant bit is not the headline number but the structure: Durov described it as a non-custodial wallet, which changes who holds the keys and therefore who carries the operational and compliance burden.

1. Durov said the rollout would be “the most massive in human history” and would bring instant transactions to Telegram’s user base of more than 1 billion people. In his framing, this is not an add-on feature for a niche crypto app; it is a payment rail embedded inside a mass-market messenger.
2. The wallet will be Gram, and Durov said it will be non-custodial, meaning only the owner has access to the funds and private keys. He also said users will not need to go through identification or provide personal data to create it.
3. Gram’s market price rose 28.8% after the announcement, according to trading data. Gram is the cryptocurrency of The Open Network (TON), which Durov said was renamed from Toncoin on 1 June.
4. This is not Telegram’s first move into crypto-linked payments. In October last year, Telegram launched trading in tokenized U.S. stocks inside the Wallet crypto wallet, a product of The Open Platform (TOP). That Wallet is custodial, meaning a third party holds the private keys and users access it through an account with a password.