Telegram Adds USDT Transfer Via Wallet Bot

1. Telegram’s @wallet bot added USDT for chat transfers, expanding crypto trading capabilities.
2. Integrating crypto payments into messaging apps like Telegram could boost mainstream adoption.
3. Despite abandoning TON, Telegram maintains an interest in blockchain, demonstrated by the Fragment platform.

As per the recent announcement on Wednesday, Telegram’s @wallet bot has incorporated USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, which enables users to transfer it within their chats. This feature expands Telegram’s cryptocurrency trading capabilities, allowing users to buy and sell crypto more conveniently.

Enabling cryptocurrency payments integration into messaging apps like Telegram, with the potential of making sending digital assets as simple as sending a message or a photo, could greatly facilitate mainstream adoption.

In April of last year, Telegram’s @wallet bot included Bitcoin (BTC) and Toncoin (TON) in its marketplace, with TON also available for chat transfers. Stablecoins such as USDT provide similar benefits to other cryptocurrencies but without the price fluctuations that often affect bitcoin and ether.

As a result, they are an essential component for users who want to keep their funds within the crypto ecosystem while avoiding any significant swings in value.

Including USDT could be a significant milestone for Telegram’s cryptocurrency service. Telegram’s involvement in the crypto space dates back several years to the development of the Open Network (TON) blockchain project.

However, due to legal disputes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this initiative was abandoned in 2020.

Although Telegram was no longer directly involved in TON, the project was kept alive by a group of community members known as The TON Foundation, who have been working to advance it. While not directly involved in TON, Telegram still maintains an interest in the network, as demonstrated by their creation of the blockchain-based auction platform Fragment, which was built on top of the TON network in late 2022.