Gram (GRAM): why the price gave back 7.5 percent after Telegram opened its wallet

Telegram widened access to its own wallet, called Money, on Friday 9 October 2026. Since then, far more users can send and receive Gram directly inside the messenger and pay for digital collectibles with it. The price jumped to $1.4871 that Friday and is back at $1.3761 this Wednesday, according to CoinGecko on 14 October at around 01:00. The gain from the news has been given back in full within five days.

For holders in Europe, the wallet is still the more important half of the story. Money is built to be non-custodial: the private keys sit with the user alone. Telegram cannot view them, cannot reverse a transfer and cannot restore a lost balance. Switching the feature on means taking on a responsibility that someone else carries on an exchange account.

What Telegram changed about the Money wallet on 9 October

Money is not a new product but the new name of the former Gram Wallet. Telegram announced it in July, and a limited launch ran for selected accounts in August. On 9 October that limit largely fell away: access now reaches beyond the selected circle and is being rolled out more broadly across the messenger's audience, which numbers more than a billion people.

The wording matters. Neither Telegram nor the outlets reporting on it say that every account already has the feature. FinanceFeeds states explicitly that the announcement is no evidence of a full rollout, and crypto.news likewise speaks of an expansion beyond the users selected so far. If you cannot see the wallet in your app yet, you have done nothing wrong.

Functionally, Money does two things: it holds and sends Gram, and it buys Telegram gifts and collectible usernames. Transfers from an existing Walt account are described by the provider as a matter of a few steps, credited immediately and without a network fee.

Money and Walt: two Telegram wallets with two custody models

This is where most of the confusion arises, so here is the difference in one sentence per product. Money is the new, non-custodial wallet inside the messenger: the keys sit with the user. Walt is the older wallet service, which continues under its own brand and holds the balance on the user's behalf.

The term behind it: a non-custodial wallet is one in which only the user holds the private key and nobody else can reach the balance. The counterpart is custodial safekeeping, where a provider holds the key and moves the balance on request, much as a bank runs an account.

Both models have a price. With a custodial account you carry the risk that the provider fails, is suspended or halts withdrawals. With your own wallet you carry the risk of losing the key. Which design suits you depends less on the coin than on the sum involved and on how often you move it. An overview of the designs and their pitfalls is in the software wallet comparison.

Non-custodial means nobody can restore your balance

The sentence sounds technical and has a very practical consequence. If the phone is lost, stolen or ends up in the dishwasher, your Gram stands or falls with the recovery phrase, the sequence of words from which the private key can be recalculated. Telegram does not have it. There is no hotline, no ID upload and no form that could retrieve access for you.

A wrongly addressed transfer is just as final. A transaction on the blockchain cannot be cancelled, and with a non-custodial wallet there is nobody who could try on your behalf. The same mechanism has in the past left Gram transfers stuck in the network when a required comment was missing. We took that case apart on the network data at the end of September.

In practice, that means the recovery phrase belongs offline, on paper or better in metal, in two separate places. A screenshot in your photo library is not a backup but a copy in the cloud.

The Gram price this week: $1.38 and 9.5 percent below the weekly high

The figures for the past seven days, all from CoinGecko as of Wednesday 14 October at around 01:00: Gram stands at $1.3761, or roughly €1.23. The weekly high was $1.5198 on 7 October, the weekly low $1.3480 on 8 October. Over seven days that works out to a loss of 9.45 percent, over 30 days a gain of 2.47 percent.

Market capitalisation is around $3.89 billion, which corresponds to rank 32. Roughly 2.83 billion Gram are in circulation. Trading volume over 24 hours is around $31 million, so less than one percent of market capitalisation. The all-time high of $8.25 dates from 14 June 2024, leaving today's price 83.3 percent below it.

On the move on the day of the news itself, the figures diverge, and we are not smoothing them over. In the report linked above, crypto.news puts Friday at around nine percent. Our own count of CoinGecko's hourly values comes out somewhat lower: from $1.3762 at 01:00 to $1.4871 at 14:00, so a little over eight percent. Depending on which start and end point a newsroom picks, a different number comes out. The range from just under seven to just under nine percent describes the same event.

The Toncoin to Gram rename in June played out almost identically

For this article we set CoinGecko's daily values around this year's two big Telegram stories side by side. The pattern repeats strikingly closely.

On 15 June 2026 Toncoin was officially renamed Gram after a community vote passed; what the switch meant for holders in Europe is something we described on 27 September in Toncoin is now Gram. The price stood at $1.7529 that day, the highest point of that week. Two weeks later, on 29 June, it was at $1.5864. That is 9.5 percent lower.

On 9 October 2026 Telegram opened the Money wallet and the price rose to $1.4871. Five days later it is at $1.3761, so 7.5 percent lower. Two pieces of news, both read as milestones, and both times the premium was eaten up within two weeks.

A second point from the same rename is still visible today: the official guide recommended displaying "Gram (prev. Toncoin)" for a transitional period of three months. CoinGecko still carries the name in exactly that form four months after the cut-off date. The blockchain itself is still called The Open Network, or TON. Only the token's name and ticker were changed.

A wallet opening rarely carries the price for longer than a day

Why does news like this fizzle out? With infrastructure stories the mechanism is almost always the same. A wallet creates no additional demand for the token, it only lowers the barrier to using it. On the day of the news, buying comes from traders reacting to that very headline, and selling comes from the same traders as soon as the headline has run its course.

Add to that the size of the market. With daily volume of around $31 million against a market capitalisation of $3.89 billion, even a mid-sized sale moves the price noticeably. Inflows that come from actual use, by contrast, work slowly: first people have to have the feature switched on at all, then they have to buy Gram in order to pay for something with it.

That is exactly why the cautious wording of the announcement is no side issue. As long as there is no evidence of how many of the more than one billion accounts really see the wallet, the usage effect remains an expectation rather than a number.

Our assessment: distribution decides, not the announcement

From the newsroom's point of view, the Money opening is the most important Gram story since the rename, and it still does not justify a higher price while three pieces of evidence are missing. First, no source gives a figure for how many accounts actually have the wallet today; FinanceFeeds explicitly treats a full rollout as unproven. Second, the market itself shows that it does not trust the news: 7.5 percent below the high of the news day, on volume of less than one percent of market capitalisation. Third, 15 June offers a directly comparable case in which 9.5 percent was gone after two weeks.

There is a serious argument on the other side: a payment route built into a messenger with this reach starts from a different position than an app you first have to download. If Telegram really does switch the feature on across the board over the coming months, demand will come from payments rather than from a headline. That cannot be evidenced today; it can be measured later against the network's transaction counts. None of this is a recommendation to buy, and a total loss remains possible with any token.

Buying Gram in Europe: exchanges with MiCA authorisation

A wallet is no substitute for a way to buy. You still get Gram through a trading venue, and now that the European MiCA regulation applies in full, providers actively targeting customers in the EU need an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider for it. MiCA is the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets, which sets authorisation, capital requirements and disclosure duties uniformly across Europe.

In practice that means two things for your purchase. Before your first deposit you should check whether the provider holds a MiCA authorisation from a European supervisor, because deposit protection questions, complaint routes and tax documentation all depend on it. And you should look at total costs rather than the stated order fee alone: with smaller altcoins the larger share of the cost regularly sits in the spread, the gap between the buying and the selling price. Which venues hold the authorisation is set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges below.

Holding period and tax: what a transfer into your own wallet triggers

Moving from an exchange into the Money wallet regularly raises the same worry. The reassurance first: a transfer between two wallets that both belong to you is not a sale. In Germany it triggers no taxable event and does not restart the holding period under section 23 of the Income Tax Act.

Documentation is what counts. For the one-year holding period, the date of acquisition is what matters, and you have to be able to evidence it once the coins no longer sit on the platform where you bought them. So keep the exchange's purchase record and note the transaction ID of the transfer. Anyone moving coins between platforms and their own wallet more often loses that thread quickly.

Two points are less obvious. If you buy a digital collectible with Gram, for tax purposes that is a disposal of the Gram and not merely a purchase, because you are handing over a crypto asset. And network fees incurred when sending count towards acquisition costs or disposal costs respectively. With the fee-free transfers from a Walt account that Telegram describes, that item does not arise.

Levels above and below: $1.35 and $1.52

As an observation, not a price target: on the downside the next reference is the weekly low of $1.3480 from 8 October. The current price of $1.3761 sits only about two percent above it, so the distance is small. Below that comes the round level of $1.30.

On the upside the weekly high of $1.5198 from 7 October is the first hurdle, with the news day's intraday high of $1.4871 in between. The fact that this high was sold off completely within five days makes it the obvious yardstick: only above it would the wallet news really have carried the price.

Scams around the name change

A name change is an invitation to fraudsters, and the scheme has run unchanged since June. The official rename guide is explicit: balances never had to be swapped, claimed or moved, and holdings stayed as they were. Any site asking you to "migrate" or "claim" Gram is therefore an attempted fraud.

The wallet opening adds a second variant. Anyone who receives a message offering to help them "unlock" Money and asking for the recovery phrase in the process is dealing with an attack. No genuine wallet, no support desk and no messenger ever asks for that sequence of words. You enter it only in the device itself, when you are restoring a wallet.

An older principle still applies too: a second account with the same name and picture says nothing about authenticity. Always check features in the app itself and follow no link from an unsolicited message.

Money wallet: without the recovery phrase the balance is gone

The wallet opening is good news for how usable Gram is and, so far, none for the price. If you switch the feature on, the backup is what matters most.

1. Secure the recovery phrase offline before you move any balance. Two copies in two places, on paper or in metal, never as a screenshot. For larger holdings a separate hardware solution remains the more robust choice; the designs are in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Start with a small amount. Send a sum whose loss would not hurt you first, and bring it back once. Only when both directions have worked should the rest follow. For the purchase itself, use a provider with European authorisation, as listed among the regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Record the acquisition date and the transaction ID. That costs a minute during the move and later decides whether you can evidence the one-year holding period to the tax office. The tax tools take the note-keeping off your hands.

(As of October 14, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)