Messaging platform Telegram is raising at least $1.5 billion through a new bond offering.

The firm is raising the funds through a five-year bond with a 9% yield, which has drawn interest from both returning investors such as the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, as well as new entrants including hedge fund Citadel, the Wall Street Journal reports citing sources with the deal.

The proceeds will be used to repurchase debt from Telegram’s earlier bond issuance in 2021, due next March. The new bonds are convertible into equity at a discount if Telegram goes public.

Telegram originally developed layer 1 network TON, before making it an independent operation. In April, tokenization firm Libre said it plans to tokenize $500 million worth of Telegram debt on TON as Telegram Bond Fund (TBF).

Read more: Telegram’s TON Takes On Real World Assets With Libre’s $500M Tokenized Bond Fund

Telegram reportedly has over 1 billion monthly active users and 15 million paid subscribers, having doubled the figure in one year according to Durov.

Financially, the firm turned a corner in 2024, reporting a $540 million profit on $1.4 billion in revenue, up from a $173 million loss in 2023, the WSJ wrote. It projects a profit of more than $700 million for 2025.

Telegram has grown its revenue by expanding its ad business and introducing features like in-app digital gifts and a platform for developers to build apps and bots.

Telegram and Citadel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has published a forensic review on last week’s $1.5 billion hack, revealing that its systems had not been infiltrated and that the issue seemed to have stemmed from compromised Safe wallet infrastructure.

Bybit concluded from the review that “the credentials of a Safe developer were compromised,” which allowed the Lazarus hacking group to gain unauthorized access to the Safe wallet and subsequently deceive Bybit staff into signing the malicious transaction.

However, a person familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that despite the wallet’s infrastructure being compromised by social engineering, the hack would not have been possible had Bybit not “blind signed” the transaction. The term refers to a mechanism where a smart contract transaction is approved without comprehensive knowledge of its contents.

Safe also issued a statement saying that “Safe smart contracts [were] unaffected, an attack was conducted by compromising a Safe {Wallet} developer machine which affected an account operated by Bybit.” It also pointed out that a “forensic review of external security researchers did NOT indicate any vulnerabilities in the Safe smart contracts or source code of the frontend and services.”

The apparent back and forth between both companies mirrors that of WazirX and Liminal Custody, which blamed each other following a $230 million exploit last July.

On-chain data analyzed by ZachXBT shows that Lazarus is attempting to launder the stolen funds, with 920 wallets currently being tainted with the ill-gotten gains. The funds, perhaps inadvertently, have been commingled with stolen funds from hacks targeting Phemex and Poloniex, linking Lazarus Group to all three.
Read more: Bybit Declares ‘War on Lazarus’ as It Crowdsources Effort to Freeze Stolen Funds