With over 1 billion monthly active users and a wallet embedded directly in the app, Telegram is the largest messaging platform to integrate crypto into its core product, allowing users to send, receive, and trade digital assets without leaving the platform. This month, it also added perpetual futures trading, bringing derivatives to retail users.
This is a rare way for crypto to reach mainstream users — through messengers already in their pockets. Halil Mirahmed, Chief Strategy Officer of Wallet in Telegram, describes the problem of adoption as one of translation. Crypto has all the right properties — speed, borderlessness, programmability — but still often speaks the wrong language to first-time users.
“We try to obfuscate the difficult aspects of crypto for first-time users,” Mirahmed said in an interview with me. “Instead of pasting addresses and dealing with gas fees, you can simply choose a Telegram contact and send assets directly.”
In practice, Telegram prompts users to automatically create a wallet when they receive a token from a friend, whether or not they have used crypto before. This removes one of the steepest barriers in crypto adoption, onboarding.
The numbers reflect this approach. Roughly 15% of Telegram’s user base now holds a wallet, which is about 150 million accounts. For comparison, Robinhood has about 25 million funded accounts.
Telegram’s wallet provides access to crypto alongside other assets, such as commodities and forex, through partner integrations. Similar to exchanges, users can also trade perpetual futures on assets ranging from Ethereum to gold, with a minimum trade size of $1. Most of these functions are not available in the United States, one of the most tightly regulated crypto markets.
“The key is to keep it simple for retail Telegram users — long, short, stop loss, leverage,” Mirahmed said while showing me the interface. “Complicated interfaces will lose retail users.”
Along with trading, Telegram has introduced a rewards system. Users who trade receive “gift boxes” with prizes, currently including TON Coin, the native token of the TON blockchain, with plans to expand incentives. The mechanic is intentionally social, as referrals generate more rewards, creating a viral loop.
“Typical reward programs benefit only the top 1–2% of traders,” Mirahmed said. “Our gift boxes aim to be fun and engaging for a broader group.”
TON Coin, the native token of the TON blockchain, ranks among the thirty largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, reinforcing the scale of the ecosystem Telegram is building around its wallet.
The main obstacle to bringing Telegram into the most capital-rich market is regulation. What works globally does not fully translate to the United States. The custodial wallet, the version that enables perpetual trading and other advanced features, is not available to U.S. users. Instead, users can access a self-custodial wallet, which allows on-chain transactions on the TON blockchain, including DEX swaps, staking, and NFT ownership.
“The custodial crypto wallet where this feature is live is not accessible in the United States,” Mirahmed said. “That’s why we have a self-custodial wallet in the U.S. If we released a custodial wallet, we’d face many more regulatory requirements.”
With headquarters in Dubai, UAE, Telegram’s strongest adoption is concentrated in markets such as India, Brazil, and Russia. The wallet itself is developed by The Open Platform, a separate company building applications within Telegram’s ecosystem.
In many of these regions, cross-border payments are a primary use case. A Telegram user in one country sends tokens to another, who converts them into local currency for everyday expenses. The rails are crypto, but the outcome is fiat.
“In other places, remittances are very popular,” Mirahmed said. “In the U.S. we’re taking more of a social direction, showing how TON is social on Telegram, different collectibles, different art, things that are more interesting to Americans.”
Telegram’s approach sits between traditional fintech and native crypto platforms. It competes with fintech apps such as Robinhood and Revolut, which combine multiple financial services in a single interface. While those platforms added crypto as an additional feature, Telegram is building financial services on top of crypto infrastructure from the start, giving it a significant ability to influence how users adopt financial tools.
This stems partly from Telegram’s history. Its founder, Pavel Durov, has long positioned the platform in opposition to centralized control, including past conflicts with governments and regulators. In 2018, Telegram raised $1.7 billion in one of the largest initial coin offerings (ICOs) at the time to build the TON blockchain. The project was halted after intervention from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2020, forcing the company to abandon the project. Telegram later released the code as open source, and independent developers, along with the TON Foundation, continued building the blockchain.
Telegram’s use of TON is reshaping how new users enter crypto. For many, the wallet embedded in the app is their first, and sometimes only, interaction with digital assets. Combined with incentives such as referrals and in-app games and rewards, adoption spreads more organically than through standalone crypto platforms.
Regulation still limits what Telegram can offer, particularly in the United States. With only about 15% of users currently holding a wallet, the company plans to tap into this growth potential.