Telegram reaches more than a billion people every month6. Since Oct. 20, an app inside it has let an AI chatbot trade crypto for its users2.
The app is Walt, called Wallet in Telegram until Sept. 283. A Walt user can connect ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Cursor or Mira, an assistant that lives in Telegram2. The agent can read a market, open a position and check the risk in one chat.
Walt counted more than 150 million registered users in April, when it added futures trading4. Telegram's own wallet, now called Money, is rolling out to over a billion people, Walt's news channel said on Oct. 95. Walt sits one tap away from that wallet.
Walt's 150 million users sit inside Telegram's 1 billion
People, one cube per million
Each cube is one million people. The block is Telegram's 1 billion monthly users; Walt's 150 million registered users lift off the top, and Mira's 2 million light up on its side. Walt counts registered users and Telegram counts monthly ones, so the groups may overlap.
Sources: Walt [1]; Walt [4]; TechCrunch [6]. Figure by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this figure
| Group | People, one cube per million |
|---|---|
| Walt's registered users, April 2026 | 150 |
| Mira's users, more than 2 million, per Walt | 2 |
| Telegram's monthly users, the whole block, one cube per 1 | 1,000 |
Walt answered five questions about the launch from CryptoLately, AI Lately's sister publication. Alex Kralkin, Walt's director of wealth and investment, wrote each answer1. They describe a separate account, an off switch and a borrowing limit that moves with each market.
How a Chatbot Plugs Into Walt
The link runs on MCP, short for Model Context Protocol. Anthropic released it as open source on Nov. 25, 2024, as "a new standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives"9. A company publishes an MCP server, and any assistant that speaks the protocol can use it.
"ChatGPT and Claude connect through MCP, the open protocol that lets AI assistants talk to external services," Kralkin said1. "The user adds Walt’s MCP server in the assistant’s settings and authorizes the connection from their Walt account."
The user therefore approves the connection twice. First they add the server inside the chatbot, and then they authorize the link inside Walt. Walt's channel lists its side of the steps: open Walt, tap "Create AI agent account," pick an agent and connect it2.
One Account, One Switch
The agent gets its own account, and the user decides how big it is.
"The assistant works only with a dedicated trading account, separate from the user’s main Walt wallet," Kralkin said1. "The user decides how much to fund it with. The assistant cannot access funds outside that account."
Trading permission also starts switched off. "Order execution is off by default," Kralkin said1. "The assistant can place trades only after the user turns that permission on."
Walt's launch post adds a second check. The agent "places every trade only once you confirm," the post says, and "The agent can't withdraw funds"2.
Fifty Times the Deposit
The agent trades perpetual futures, or perps. A perp is a contract on a coin's price that runs until the trader closes it. Perps let a trader add borrowed money, called leverage, so each gain and each loss grows.
Walt added perps on April 2, with more than 50 markets from Bitcoin and TON to oil, metals and stocks4. Kralkin confirmed who fills the orders. "Yes. Walt executes trades through Lighter, and Lighter fills the orders," he said1.
Lighter calls itself a decentralized trading platform. Its documents say it was the first exchange to offer verifiable order matching and liquidations10.
How much can an agent borrow? "Maximum leverage varies by asset, from 3x to 50x," Kralkin said1. "It depends on each market’s liquidity: deeper markets allow higher leverage, thinner markets get lower caps. The user sees the applicable limit for each asset before placing a trade."
At 50x, a trader puts up 2 percent of a position's size and borrows the rest. A 2 percent move the wrong way can erase that deposit, before fees. The cushion grows as the borrowing shrinks: 5 percent at 20x, 10 percent at 10x and about 33 percent at 3x.
At Walt's 50x cap, a 2 percent move can erase a trader's deposit
Price move that erases a position's deposit, by leverage, before fees, in percent
Each tower is one leverage level; the lit tower is Walt's top cap, and a shorter tower leaves less room before the deposit is gone.
The moves are AI Lately's arithmetic from the leverage range Kralkin gave; fees and each market's rules move the real figure.
Source: Walt [1]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 3x | 33% |
| 10x | 10% |
| 20x | 5% |
| 50x | 2% |
Europe set a far lower cap for ordinary traders. In March 2018, its securities regulator limited retail contracts tied to crypto prices to 2 to 112. Walt's top limit is 25 times higher. Its launch post warns that "Investments in crypto are risky," and says it is meant for people outside the United Kingdom2.
Free to Use, Paid Through Fees
"The AI trading feature carries no additional fee," Kralkin said1. "It is available at launch to all Walt users. Standard perpetuals trading fees apply to trades as they do today."
Walt still earns on every order an agent places, through those standard fees. The company says perps volume grew more than 300 percent in 2025 and neared $8 trillion for the year4. By April, it added, monthly trading topped $1 trillion.
Why Telegram Matters
Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, said on March 19, 2025, that the app had passed 1 billion monthly users6. A year earlier, Telegram reported 950 million.
Walt began as a small feature inside that messaging app. "Five years ago, we launched a simple wallet bot that made it easy to buy Toncoin and Bitcoin for Telegram users," Andrew Rogozov wrote in his Sept. 28 letter3. Rogozov is founder and chief executive of The Open Platform, the company behind Walt. His letter promised AI trading to help users "analyze markets, assess portfolio risk, discover opportunities, and execute perpetuals."
Rogozov laid out the bet in April, when perps went live. "Perpetual trading has traditionally been intimidating for retail users, requiring complex UIs and moving funds to sophisticated exchanges," he said4. "By integrating Lighter directly into Wallet, we are making advanced leveraged trading simple and accessible where millions of users already communicate and hold crypto."
Mira grew up in the same app. The Open Platform launched it on Feb. 9, 2026, as an AI assistant built for Telegram7. By June 7, Mira's counter showed 1,167,762 monthly users8. Its team gave group chats the credit: "More than a third of our new users first meet Mira inside a shared group, watching her summarize a thread or pull action items out of a messy conversation before they ever message her on their own."
Kralkin kept the two audiences separate. "Walt doesn’t hold data on how many Walt users use Mira," he said1. "Mira is a separate product with more than 2 million users, but that figure is not a count of Walt users, and the two shouldn’t be conflated."
Walt's agents arrived 201 days after its perps launch.
Walt's AI agents arrived 201 days after its perps launch
Dated steps from Mira's launch to AI agents trading on Walt, 2026
Each point is one dated event, spaced by real time; the lit point is the day AI agents could trade on Walt.
Sources: Walt News on Telegram [2]; Walt [3]; Walt [4]; Walt News on Telegram [5]; The Open Platform [7]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Feb. 9, 2026 | Mira launches in Telegram. An AI assistant built for Telegram |
| April 2, 2026 | Perps launch at up to 50x. Lighter fills the orders |
| Sept. 28, 2026 | Wallet becomes Walt. Rogozov's letter promises AI trading |
| Oct. 9, 2026 | Telegram's Money wallet. Rolling out to over a billion people |
| Oct. 20, 2026 | AI agents trade on Walt. ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Cursor or Mira |
What Happens on a Bad Day
On Oct. 10, 2025, a tariff threat hit crypto markets11. More than $19 billion in positions were wiped out, and more than 1.6 million traders were liquidated, PYMNTS reported, citing CoinGlass data.
CryptoLately asked Walt how an agent stays clear of a day like Oct. 10. Kralkin answered in two parts.
"The agent’s reach is limited by design," Kralkin said1. "It trades from an isolated account, separate from the user’s main Walt balance, and it can only trade the funds the user put into that account. It cannot withdraw or transfer funds. The most a user can lose through the agent is what they chose to fund it with."
"Order execution is off by default, and the user turns it on," Kralkin added1. "Users set the agent’s instructions and trading parameters, can monitor its activity, and can disconnect it at any time."
Kralkin's pledge caps the loss at the deposit. The speed of that loss at 50x stays an open question.
The Case For and the Case Against
Kralkin's case for the launch rests on three limits1. The loss stops at the deposit, the user holds an off switch, and each market's liquidity sets its leverage.
Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, makes the case against. He spoke to Yohan Yun of Cointelegraph at Token2049 Singapore, in a story published Oct. 2013. "If you have one agent that handles your personal schedule, that handles your family schedule, that handles your trips … and on top of it gives you advice on your crypto, that’s not just going to be confusing for the agent. It’s going to be confusing for you," Siu said.
Siu also warned that a thousand people asking AI about the same trade could get roughly the same answer. He wants owners free to move an agent's memory. "At minimum, you have the right to download your data so that you can basically transfer it somewhere else so that another agent might be able to take over," he said.
Kralkin's case holds if the separate account keeps each loss to the deposit. Siu's case holds if many agents read one market the same way at the same moment. Each reader decides which risk weighs more.
What to do
- Fund the agent account with an amount you could lose in full. Kralkin says that amount is the most a user can lose through the agent1.
- Leave order execution off for the first few days, and read what the agent suggests before you let it trade.
- Check the leverage cap on each market before a trade. At 50x, a 2 percent move can erase the deposit.
- Confirm each trade yourself. Walt's post says the agent places a trade only once you confirm2.
- Disconnect the agent when you stop watching it. Kralkin says a user can do that at any time1.
- Read CryptoLately's version of this story for all five of Kralkin's answers in full.
Sources
- Alex Kralkin, "Written answers to questions from CryptoLately," Walt, Oct. 20, 2026
- Walt, "Your AI perps assistant on Walt Street · 3/5," Walt News on Telegram, Oct. 20, 2026, https://t.me/walt_news/889
- Andrew Rogozov, "Wallet becomes Walt: a letter from Andrew Rogozov," Walt, Sept. 28, 2026, https://walt.io/news/a-letter-from-andrew-rogozov-ceo-and-founder-top
- Walt, "Wallet launches perpetual futures for 150M+ users with Lighter," Walt, April 2, 2026, https://walt.io/news/wallet-in-telegram-launches-perpetual-futures-for-150-m-users-with-lighter
- Walt, "Telegram is launching its wallet for everyone," Walt News on Telegram, Oct. 9, 2026, https://t.me/walt_news/883
- Ivan Mehta, "Telegram founder Pavel Durov says app now has 1B users, calls WhatsApp a 'cheap, watered-down imitation'," TechCrunch, March 19, 2025, https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/19/telegram-founder-pavel-durov-says-app-now-has-1b-users-calls-whatsapp-a-cheap-watered-down-imitation/
- The Open Platform, "Mira is the first Cocoon-powered AI assistant in Telegram," The Open Platform, Feb. 9, 2026, https://top.co/insights/mira-ai-assistant-telegram
- Mira, "Mira Just Crossed 1 Million Monthly Users Inside Telegram," Mira, June 7, 2026, https://mira.tg/blog/mira-1-million-monthly-users
- Anthropic, "Introducing the Model Context Protocol," Anthropic, Nov. 25, 2024, https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol
- Lighter, "Introduction," Lighter Docs, Oct. 20, 2026, https://docs.lighter.xyz/
- PYMNTS, "Tariff Threat Triggers Record $19 Billion in Crypto Liquidations," PYMNTS, Oct. 12, 2025, https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2025/tariffs-trigger-record-19-billion-in-crypto-liquidations/
- ESMA, "ESMA agrees to prohibit binary options and restrict CFDs to protect retail investors," European Securities and Markets Authority, March 27, 2018, https://www.esma.europa.eu/press-news/esma-news/esma-agrees-prohibit-binary-options-and-restrict-cfds-protect-retail-investors
- Yohan Yun, "Agents can trade 24/7 — but Yat Siu warns you could lose access at any time," Cointelegraph Magazine, Oct. 20, 2026, https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/ai-trade-sleep-yat-siu-warns-losing-agent