Telegram, a social media messenger app founded by two Russian brothers in 2013 is fast becoming the face of global crypto adoption due to certain strategic moves and structure set up by the Telegram team. 

Telegram was founded as an alternative to the popular messaging app WhatsApp with its main focus of becoming the biggest player in the electronic messaging sector of the internet. 

Telegram seemed to have achieved this single objective with the app now boasting over 900 million global users. A recent poll revealed that one out of every four internet users use Telegram. 

Telegram’s massive success in a little over a decade has not stopped it from exploring new areas and diversifying its services. 

In 2018, Telegram developed The Open Network (TON) blockchain marking its diversification into blockchain services. 

Telegram in its new foray into blockchain and crypto has now become the face of a solution to a problem that has plagued the crypto industry since its inception. 

The Challenge of Mass Adoption 

The crypto and blockchain industry has been plagued by one major challenge since the industry came to life. The age-old problem of the industry can be summarized into a simple question. 

How do you get the rest of the World onboarded to the idea of cryptocurrency? 

Despite massive gains made by various crypto projects, the fact still remains that crypto as an idea still appeals only to a small fragment of the global society.

Besides the question of utility, global crypto adoption has been hindered by poor user experience and terrible distribution.  

Most crypto projects start as ideas with no community apart from the team of developers and early investors. The challenge for most crypto projects remains to build a loyal community around its products. Some projects like Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange have had some success in doing this but its community is still negligible compared to the number of global internet users. 

Telegram’s new foray into crypto might have ended the search for the Super App because, unlike other projects, Telegram’s strong utility has attracted a massive Global user base that can be onboarded into the world of cryptocurrency with little fuss. 

Telegram Driving Massive Crypto Adoption 

Telegram’s diversification into Crypto is at the center of bridging the world of Web2 and Web3. 

Telegram, a messaging app with a user base of 900 million monthly active users has incorporated a blockchain driving crypto adoption into its structure and a Wallet for storing crypto assets. 

These two new features bring cryptocurrency to the fingertips of the existing 900 million Telegram users marking the single biggest onboarding opportunity in the crypto space. 

This opportunity is highlighted by the massive success of Play to Earn crypto projects like Hamster Kombat and Notcoin hosted on Telegram 

Telegram users now have already-made crypto wallet addresses for storing crypto assets. Such users can send crypto to their friends as easily as sending a message. 

This amazing UX is miles ahead of the ones available on crypto exchanges and traditional banking apps and is exactly the type of utility capable of onboarding the average internet user to crypto. 

Telegram Mini Apps 

A key exciting feature of Telegram driving massive crypto adoption is known as Telegram mini apps. 

Telegram Mini Apps (TMAs) are web applications that run inside Telegram and allow developers to build web applications directly in the Telegram app using major web programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. 

These apps developed are available in the Telegram Apps Center a Mini App accessible via a dedicated bot on Telegram. 

Telegram debuted the Mini Apps platform in 2023 to enable developers worldwide to launch new applications. 

In 2024, Telegram enabled developers to start integrating the TON blockchain into the development of Telegram Mini apps. 

Telegram’s massive userbase coupled with the TON blockchain’s fast transactions and low fees made Telegram mini apps an instant hit.  

The above combination gave rise to successful Telegram-based games like Hamster Kombat, Notcoin, and Yescoin. 

Hamster Kombat, a product of the combination of Telegram and TON blockchain, has become arguably the biggest Play to Earn Crypto game in the industry with over 300 million players. 

Telegram mini apps are a very important aspect of Telegram’s drive to onboard the world to crypto. 

Going by the mission statement of Telegram’s blockchain TON which aims to “Put Crypto into every pocket,” it is clear that Telegram is focused on the task of bringing the world to cryptocurrency.

As more apps with different utilities are created on the platform, Telegram stands to appeal to different subsets of the global internet user increasing the chances of onboarding them to crypto.