Telegram is expanding access to its crypto wallet to its 87 million users in the U.S. The TON Wallet — which is built into Telegram’s interface — is beginning its U.S. rollout this week. It is a self-custodial crypto wallet in which a user controls their own private keys.
This service has been developed by The Open Platform (TOP) and built on the TON blockchain. It allows users to send stablecoins and other digital tokens to their contacts as easily as sending a message. While the company has offered crypto wallets to international users since 2023, it has been unable to roll out this service in the U.S. due to regulatory uncertainty, which has shifted over the past year, according to TOP CEO Andrew Rogozov. More than 100 million global users have activated their wallets in 2024.
“We started considering the U.S. as a more interesting opportunity for us,” Rogozov told CNBC, citing a shift in regulatory conditions and Telegram’s user growth. He mentioned that there were a lot of crypto users on the platform, and described the wallet as “the fundamental part of this infrastructure,” giving users a way to store assets and interact with Telegram’s growing ecosystem of Mini Apps.
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“Our goal, our mission here, is to remove as much friction as possible,” Rogozov said. “And this is basically what crypto is trying to solve especially at the global scale by removing all the borders.” He added that there was no need “to download the wallet, or remember the seed phrase.”
TON Wallet supports peer-to-peer transfers, swaps between tokens, staking to earn yield, and zero-fee crypto purchases through a partnership with MoonPay. It also provides on- and off-ramps via debit cards and connects to decentralized apps inside Telegram’s “Mini Apps.”
Egor Danilov, chief product officer at The Open Platform and Wallet in Telegram, told Cointelegraph that the wallet is the primary gateway to TON’s Mini Apps. “The wallet is pivotal in connecting users with payments, games and on-chain tools, all within a familiar environment they interact with daily.” He also mentioned efforts to protect users against scams and phishing.
“We’re soon introducing features such as whitelists, blacklists, transaction emulation and other advanced fraud detection tools to help users make safer choices before confirming transactions,” he said.
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Telegram had formally distanced itself from the TON blockchain after abandoning its own crypto token effort in 2020 under SEC pressure. However, it has continued to integrate TON-based features such as tokenized usernames, stickers, and emojis, and has publicly supported Fragment, a collectibles marketplace built on TON since then.
The Open Platform (TOP) — which has developed this service — announced its successful $28.5 million Series A funding round on July 3. This brought the company’s valuation to $1 billion. The round was led by fintech specialist Ribbit Capital with participation from prominent crypto venture capital firm Pantera Capital.