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What happened
Telegram just flipped the switch. The messaging giant — somewhere north of 950 million users at last count — has made its self-custodial Gram wallet the default option for users inside the app. At the same time, what was previously called Wallet in Telegram got a new name: Walt. Two moves, one week, and suddenly the crypto world is paying attention to a messaging app again.
The Gram wallet isn’t a custodial product where Telegram holds your keys. It’s self-custodial, meaning users control their own private keys and, by extension, their own funds. That’s a meaningful distinction. It’s also a harder sell to mainstream users who aren’t used to that kind of responsibility — lose your seed phrase, lose your money, full stop. But Telegram made it the default anyway, which says something about where the company thinks this is all heading.
Walt, the rebranded version of the old Wallet in Telegram, probably isn’t going away. It seems the two products will coexist, serving different user needs. Details on exactly how Walt differs from the Gram wallet remain murky — Telegram hasn’t spelled that out cleanly, at least not yet.
The historical context
Tech giants wading into crypto is nothing new. Facebook tried it. In 2019, the company rolled out the Libra project with enormous fanfare — a global stablecoin backed by a basket of currencies, meant to bank the unbanked and reshape payments. Regulators in the US and Europe basically killed it before it launched. Libra became Diem, Diem got sold off, and Meta moved on. The whole episode became a cautionary tale about what happens when a platform with two billion users tries to issue something that looks like money.
Jack Dorsey took a different route. Square — now Block — didn’t try to create a new currency. It just bought Bitcoin, integrated it into Cash App, and let users buy, sell, and hold. That worked. Cash App’s Bitcoin revenue became a real line item. The lesson there was simpler: don’t fight regulators over a new asset, just use the one that already exists.
Telegram’s history with crypto is its own complicated chapter. The company raised $1.7 billion in a 2018 token sale for a project called TON — Telegram Open Network. The SEC sued. Telegram settled, paid $18.5 million, and handed back roughly $1.2 billion to investors. TON got spun off into an independent project, eventually becoming The Open Network, the blockchain that Gram runs on today. So Telegram didn’t build TON, but it’s pretty much inseparable from it at this point.
Why it matters
Making a self-custodial wallet the default is a bold call. Most fintech products go the opposite direction — they hide the complexity, hold the keys themselves, and make everything feel like a bank account. Telegram is doing the reverse. It’s betting that enough of its user base either already understands self-custody or can be brought up to speed fast enough that the friction doesn’t kill adoption.
That bet could pay off. Telegram’s user base skews toward privacy-conscious, tech-forward demographics — exactly the kind of people who might actually want to hold their own keys. And embedding the wallet directly into the app’s default interface removes at least one layer of friction. Users don’t have to go find a separate app or sign up for a separate service. It’s just there.
But the challenge is real. Self-custody means user error is permanent. There’s no customer service line to call when you send funds to the wrong address. That reality will probably slow adoption among less experienced users, no matter how clean the interface looks.
For competitors — traditional banks, fintech apps, other messaging platforms — Telegram’s move raises the stakes. If Gram wallet adoption climbs meaningfully among Telegram’s massive user base, it becomes harder to ignore. Meta, Google, and others have all flirted with payments and digital wallets. None of them have gone this far into self-custodial crypto territory.
What to watch
A few things worth tracking closely. First, user adoption of the Gram wallet over the next 90 days — any surge past 20% of Telegram’s active base would be a real signal. Second, regulatory responses from major jurisdictions. The EU, the US, and Southeast Asian regulators have all been active on crypto wallet rules lately. Any formal scrutiny or approval within 60 days would tell you a lot about whether Gram can scale without a repeat of the 2019 TON saga.
Third, watch the competition. If a major messaging app or fintech player announces a similar self-custodial push within the next quarter, that’s not coincidence — that’s a race.
Walt’s brand identity is still taking shape. The name is new, the positioning is vague, and the differentiation from Gram isn’t fully clear. Telegram has the user base to make this work. Whether it has the regulatory runway is a separate question entirely, and right now that answer is unclear.
Why It Matters
The shift to a self-custodial Gram wallet as the default option highlights Telegram's commitment to enhancing user control over their digital assets, which could drive greater adoption of cryptocurrency among its vast user base. This rebranding and integration of crypto features signal Telegram's strategic pivot towards becoming a key player in the rapidly evolving digital finance landscape, potentially influencing other platforms to adopt similar models amid growing interest in user sovereignty and privacy in the crypto space.
