BREAKING: Telegram’s Game-Changing Self-Custody Crypto Wallet Finally Launches in the US

Messaging giant Telegram just dropped a bombshell—its long-awaited self-custody crypto wallet is now live for American users. No more begging centralized exchanges for permission to own your assets.

Why this matters

With 800M+ global users, Telegram could onboard more normies to crypto than any ETF or institutional pump. The wallet’s baked right into the app—smoother than a Wall Street broker’s pitch.

The fine print

It’s non-custodial (keys = your control), supports TON ecosystem tokens, and arrives just as regulators start sweating over self-hosted wallets. Coincidence? Probably not.

The cynical take

Banks will hate this. Users can now bypass legacy rails entirely—no 3-day ACH holds, no ‘security’ freezes, just pure P2P crypto flow. Watch the lobbyists scramble.

Bottom line: A mainstream app just handed users financial sovereignty. The revolution won’t be televised—it’ll be Telegram-ified.

TON Wallet adds staking, swaps, and fiat ramps to Telegram

TOP’s CEO Andrew Rogozov said the company delayed the wallet’s U.S. release because of legal uncertainty, but the climate has changed. “We started considering the U.S. as a more interesting opportunity for us,” Andrew told CNBC. He pointed to a shift in regulations and Telegram’s growing user base in the U.S. as the main reasons they moved forward.

Andrew said there’s already a large crypto audience on the app, and the wallet gives users a way to interact with Telegram’s wider ecosystem. He described it as “the fundamental part of this infrastructure,” with crypto becoming the Core way people store assets and use apps inside Telegram.

“Our goal, our mission here, is to remove as much friction as possible,” he said. “And this is basically what crypto is trying to solve, especially at the global scale, by removing all the borders.”

Onboarding is built around a split-key system: one half is connected to the user’s Telegram account, the other to their email. There’s no need to memorize a seed phrase. “No need to download the wallet, no need to remember the seed phrase,” Andrew said. “This is how we simplify the whole thing.”

Functionality includes peer-to-peer transfers, token swaps, staking for yield, and zero-fee crypto purchases. That last feature is handled through a partnership with MoonPay, which also supports fiat ramps via debit cards. The wallet also connects to Telegram’s “Mini Apps,” allowing access to decentralized applications within the app itself.

Telegram officially stepped away from the TON blockchain in 2020 after legal pressure from the SEC killed its token plans. But the company kept integrating TON features, things like tokenized usernames, collectible stickers, and support for Fragment, a TON-based marketplace. So while Telegram no longer controls the network, it hasn’t let go of either.

With this U.S. launch, TON Wallet enters the same space as Coinbase and Cash App. But unlike those platforms, Telegram already has a direct line to its users. And instead of offering regulated financial services directly, it’s keeping clear of legal headaches by working with licensed partners like MoonPay for all fiat in-and-out transactions.

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