GRAM rises 9% as Telegram expands Money wallet access
GRAM rose 9% to $1.56 as Telegram widened access to Money, its non-custodial wallet. Market cap reached $4.12 billion as volume jumped 41% to $132.4M, and Toncoin balances carried over.
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GRAM rose 9% to $1.56 after Telegram widened access to Money, the non-custodial wallet built into the messaging app. The move lifted GRAM’s market capitalization to $4.12 billion and pushed 24-hour trading volume up 41% to $132.4 million.
What Telegram actually rolled out
The expansion was announced by Walt, the separate service formerly known as Wallet, which published the news on its own channel. The mechanism is unglamorous: an incoming transfer is what makes the Money section appear inside Telegram. Once it shows up, recipients can add GRAM from their Walt account in a few taps.
Walt described those transfers as instant and carrying no network fees. Money covers holding and sending the token native to the TON blockchain, and it is also the route to buying Telegram gifts and collectible usernames.
The distinction between the two products matters more than the marketing suggests. Walt is positioning itself as Telegram’s own non-custodial wallet, while pointing users to its separate app for trading and investing. That app is a different company product: it supports more than 300 assets across four blockchains, lists over 200 cryptocurrencies for trading, more than 100 tokenized stocks, ETFs and metals, and perpetual futures on more than 70 assets.
How the rollout got here
Telegram founder Pavel Durov first outlined the wallet idea in July, proposing instant fee-free transfers inside the app and putting self-custody directly in Telegram rather than sending users to a separate download. By August 31 he said selected accounts had started receiving access, with availability set to widen gradually.
Durov also said network validators had approved the wallet’s supporting smart contract before release, describing a design that would let developers upgrade the wallet without requiring holders to move assets to a replacement contract.
That gradual schedule is the context for the current numbers. Access is still phasing out from a selected group to a platform with more than one billion users, so today’s user count reflects a rollout that is early by design.
The rename underneath it
Toncoin became Gram on June 15, changing the asset’s name, ticker and logo while leaving the TON blockchain name intact. Walt’s guidance says existing balances, wallet addresses and GRAM Earn holdings carried over automatically, with no swap, transfer or migration approval required.
The same guidance draws a line that matters for anyone assessing risk: assets offered through Walt are split between those eligible for external deposit and withdrawal, and those that can only be bought, held and exchanged inside the service. Availability through payment providers can also vary by region.
What GRAM holders can check
The price reaction is the easy part to read and the least informative. Market capitalization rising 9% alongside volume rising 41% says holders and traders were active; it does not say anything about whether the wallet works.
The things worth confirming are concrete. Whether the Money section appears for an account outside the earlier selected group. Whether GRAM can be sent out of Money to an address the user controls, rather than only held inside it. And what the fee schedule becomes once the launch period ends, since fee-free transfers are the feature being marketed and no published schedule explains who absorbs the cost later.
For US holders the tax treatment is separate from the wallet question and does not change with it. The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property, so exchanging it for goods or another coin can produce a capital gain or loss, while moving it between wallets belonging to the same owner is a non-taxable event. Taxable transactions remain reportable even when a platform issues no information return.