Bitcoin Wallets ‘Drop’, Telegram Wallets Rise, and Both Are Nothingburgers
Onchain analysts at Santiment spotted that the number of nonempty BTC wallets reached 59.99 million on Oct. 16 before falling by less than 0.2% by Nov. 10. Santiment labeled this change as “retail is giving up,” but added that this “does not automatically mean bitcoin’s utility is shrinking,” and that it might even be a positive sign.
Potentially Bullish, Again
“During long declines, smaller traders often consolidate or empty wallets as fear grows. That type of retail capitulation has historically been a necessary ingredient before many major crypto recoveries,” the analysts further noted, adding that “this signal becomes more bullish if wallet losses continue while price stops falling.”
As Bitcoin.com News reported on Oct. 26, Santiment also suggested that a bitcoin price bottom might be near, as the network had about 30,000 fewer nonempty wallets than on Oct. 16. The analysts noted that a sustained break below $79,000 would delay the potential bottom. Since then, BTC has fallen around 7%, trading near $74,000 at the time of writing.
Same Bitcoin, Different Numbers
However, just as there is no single bitcoin price, with different prices across platforms, onchain analysts also report different figures for the same metric. For example, Coinglass data shows that the number of nonempty BTC wallets reached a record 57.3 million on Oct. 17, or 2.7 million less than Santiment’s data shows. On Nov. 8, the number was essentially unchanged, standing just 0.04% lower. Compared with 30 days earlier, however, it was still up 0.1%.
Small changes in this metric also become less reliable when assessing investor behavior, given that many people buy BTC through centralized exchanges or gain exposure through an exchange-traded fund. Neither case involves creating an individual bitcoin wallet.
Many New Wallets, Few Funded Ones
Now, back to Telegram’s numbers. The messenger’s co-founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, said on Nov. 9 that more than 700,000 wallets, called Money, were created on Telegram in the previous 48 hours. At the time of writing, the number had exceeded 930,000 over the same period, bringing the total to nearly 2.85 million wallets. However, according to GRAM Explorer, only around 178,000 of those 2.85 million wallets had a balance. This number fluctuated while this article was being written.
The funded wallets held a total of 1.73 million GRAM (previously Toncoin), worth about $1.9 million. That amounts to an average of roughly 9.7 GRAM, or $11, per funded wallet.
On Nov. 9, Telegram wallets made more than 675,000 onchain transactions, 59% more than the previous day. The explorer does not provide historical data on changes in the number of funded wallets.
According to Ton’s documentation, the wallet menu appears only when Telegram enables wallet access for an account. However, users can receive Gram even if they “have not opened the wallet yet.”
The wallet supports Gram and Telegram collectibles, such as gifts and usernames. Its underlying contract can also receive other tokens issued on the Telegram-supported Ton blockchain.
Empty Wallet Potential vs. Reality
Therefore, the data Durov and GRAM Explorer share essentially reflect how quickly Telegram is giving users access to the wallet and how quickly these are being funded.
For now, only about 6% of the opened wallets have a balance. Telegram reports more than 1 billion monthly users, meaning that less than 0.29% of them currently have a wallet. Telegram first made the wallets available to a limited group of users at the end of August 2026 and expanded access on Oct. 9.
Similarly, more than 200,000 new bitcoin addresses are still being created every day. However, this does not tell us much about whether more users are joining the network. Bitcoin wallets usually generate a new address for each transaction. An address may be used only once, although it can technically be reused, which is a bad security and privacy practice.
GRAM Crashed Despite Wallet Rollout
Therefore, the recent changes in bitcoin and Telegram wallet numbers are mostly noise against a bigger picture with many moving parts.
So far this year, the number of nonempty BTC wallets has increased by almost 4%. Meanwhile, only about 6% of the Money wallets created so far have a balance, and Telegram is still rolling out the wallet. If that rate holds, in theory, around 60 million Telegram users could eventually have funded Money wallets.
All that said, BTC is down 11% in a month and 30% in a year, while GRAM has dropped 25% and 49%, respectively. So far, the wallet rollout hasn’t lifted Gram. Since Telegram expanded wallet access on Oct. 9, Gram has fallen more than twice as much as bitcoin, despite a 5% jump on Nov. 10.
Originally published by news.bitcoin.com →
