Unpacking Telegram’s evolving crypto ecosystem

Episode 44 of The Starting Block, hosted by The Block's Gareth Jenkinson, was broadcasted live with Walt CCO Alex Kruglov.

Key topics
• Wallet in Telegram rebrands as Walt, supporting 300-plus assets.
• Walt to launch agentic trading and crypto cards for emerging markets.
• Telegram's new Gram wallet acts as entry point; Walt handles advanced trading.
• 40% of new Walt users start their journey with tokenized RWA, not crypto.
• Robinhood launches crypto perpetual futures with up to 10x leverage on Bitcoin.

Outline

- Introduction
- The Block Briefing
- Alex Kruglov Background
- Telegram Ecosystem Explained
- The Walt Rebrand
- Competition & Distribution Edge
- RWA & User Trends

Summary
Walt (formerly Wallet in Telegram) CCO Alex Kruglov joins Gareth Jenkinson on The Starting Block to discuss the company's rebrand, the platform's expansion into trading, tokenized assets and agentic trading, and how Telegram's billion-user network gives Walt a distribution edge over their rivals.

Kruglov opened by retracing his career: roughly 15 years in social media, including a decade at Russian social network VK where he served as deputy CEO before the platform became, in his words, more corporate. He and Andrew Ogosev, who had been VK's CEO after Pavel Durov departed, left to build startups inside the TON and Telegram ecosystem, eventually founding the company now called Top.com. Kruglov explained how that background of understanding how messaging platforms integrate mini-apps, bots and blockchain technology, gave the team an edge he compared to experience found mainly inside Asian super-apps like WeChat. Wallet in Telegram began as a simple text bot for purchasing and holding Toncoin at a time the token was not listed on exchanges, and over the years grew into a platform supporting approximately 300 assets, including tokenized gold and tokenized stocks.

The rebrand to Walt was driven by the product outgrowing the original wallet concept, coinciding with Telegram stepping back into an active role in the TON ecosystem by launching its own self-custodial Gram wallet. Kruglov explained the split: Telegram's Gram wallet will handle basic ecosystem functions — usernames, tokenized gifts, Stars — for the full billion-user base, while Walt targets users who want trading, yield products, investment access and, soon, crypto cards and agentic trading. On the name itself, Kruglov said it preserves continuity with the prior brand, carries the sound of "vault" for a sense of security, and carries a human quality as a person's name. Walt announced agentic trading one day before Robinhood made a similar announcement, which Kruglov flagged as validation that the industry is moving in that direction.

On user behavior, Kruglov said the majority of existing users still trade Bitcoin, Gram and other crypto assets, but 40 percent of new users begin their journey on Walt with a real-world asset — either tokenized gold or tokenized stocks. He attributed this to a broader blurring of the lines between crypto and traditional markets, predicting that within one to two years there will be little meaningful distinction between tokenized real-world assets and what he called traditional crypto. He pointed to a Kazakhstan conference where a locally developed Grain Token for the agriculture industry drew significant attention as an example of where tokenization is heading by 2027. Kruglov argued that mass adoption requires a trusted distribution partner willing to go all-in on putting crypto in front of regular people, and that Telegram — which grew to a billion users without traditional marketing — is exactly that partner.

About the guest
Alex Kruglov is the CCO at Walt (formerly Wallet in Telegram) and a co-founder of Top.com, the company behind the platform, and builds consumer-oriented blockchain infrastructure products for the Telegram and TON ecosystem. He previously worked for the major Russian social network VK, before leaving to focus on blockchain and crypto projects.