Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced on July 21, 2026, that the messaging app will roll out a native, non-custodial wallet across all versions of its app, targeting more than 1 billion monthly active users with instant, zero-fee crypto transactions.
GRAM, the native token of The Open Network (TON) blockchain, jumped roughly +7% on the news, climbing from around $1.36 to above $1.50, pushing the coin’s market cap to approximately $4.18Bn, according to CoinGecko data.
Durov wants a Gram wallet in every Telegram app by summer
Pavel @durov is teeing up what he's calling the largest non-custodial wallet rollout in history, and the plan is to bake a native the-open-network:native wallet straight into every Telegram app before summer's out.
That… pic.twitter.com/O01DkbPJfN
— BSCN (@BSCNews) July 21, 2026
The announcement is the largest distribution play in the history of self-custody crypto. For context, MetaMask, the most widely used non-custodial wallet in the space, counts tens of millions of users.
Telegram is proposing to put self-custody rails in front of an audience that dwarfs anything crypto has attempted before, which would mark a huge move for the space.
What Durov Actually Announced and What’s Different From What Telegram Already Has
Telegram already operates a crypto wallet product: the @wallet bot, run by a separate company called The Open Platform, with over 150 million registered users. The critical difference is that @wallet runs in custodial mode by default: a company holds the keys on users’ behalf, and users must actively seek it out in the app.
The new wallet is native to Telegram itself, meaning it ships baked into every version of the app rather than as an optional bot. It is non-custodial from day one, so users hold the keys to their own funds, the digital equivalent of carrying cash instead of keeping money in a bank account that a third party can freeze or block.
Whether the new wallet replaces @wallet or coexists with it has not been confirmed, and Telegram has not yet disclosed which assets beyond Gram it will support or how key management will work at scale for users who have never touched crypto before.
For those weighing the mechanics of self-custody more broadly, a detailed breakdown of how non-custodial wallets handle security and key management illustrates exactly what’s at stake when an app pushes those responsibilities to the user.
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The Make TON Great Again Roadmap and Where This Fits
Telegram's upcoming narrative:
– Ton's ticker changed to the-open-network:native (previously named the telegram equity ticker)
– The only L1 with a billion-user app attached
– Telegram having more control into the chain and platform destiny as biggest validator
– Upcoming self…— bobdbldr (@0xBobdbldr) July 21, 2026
The wallet announcement is the next step in what Durov has called the Make TON Great Again (MTONGA) roadmap. In April 2026, Durov said the TON blockchain received a 10x speed upgrade, including a 6x increase in block rate bringing transactions to sub-second finality, listed as step one of seven in the roadmap. Step two was a 6x reduction in fees.
The rebrand from Toncoin back to Gram in June 2026, approved by 81% of community voters, was itself a symbolic reset. Gram was the name Telegram originally chose in 2018 when it raised $1.7Bn for what it called the Telegram Open Network, before the SEC sued, arguing the tokens were unregistered securities.
Telegram settled in 2020, returned $1.2Bn to investors, paid an $18.5M civil penalty, and walked away. Community developers kept the chain alive as Toncoin until Durov retook the reins in 2026.
The name “restoration” was a deliberate signal that, this time, the project is Telegram’s again. XRP’s protracted SEC legal battle offers a notable parallel – another token whose trajectory was fundamentally shaped by US regulatory action, as covered in detail here.
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The Gram Price Picture: Catalysts Don’t Fix a Bearish Chart
What went wrong here?$TON / $GRAM is crazy weak pic.twitter.com/A858DCHfJQ
— VIKTOR (@thedefivillain) July 20, 2026
Gram’s 7% move on the announcement partially offset a punishing 25% slide through most of July, but the broader technical picture remains difficult. The coin’s 200-day exponential moving average sits well above the current price, confirming that the macro trend remains bearish, according to Decrypt’s analysis of TradingView data.
The more immediate milestone would require an 88% rally from the current $1.52 level just to reach Gram’s May 2026 peak of $2.89 – the high set when Telegram first announced its takeover of the network. The all-time high of $8.25, reached in June 2024 during Telegram’s tap-to-earn gaming craze, is a separate conversation entirely.
The adoption gap is the real test. If even 1% of Telegram’s billion-plus users activate the new wallet and transact regularly, that figure multiplies by orders of magnitude. Distribution and activation are not the same thing, and Durov has given no launch date beyond “this summer.”
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The post Pavel Durov’s Native Telegram Wallet Play: What It Means for Gram’s Price appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
