Telegram, Bond Funds & Blockchain: The $500M Drama You Never Knew You Needed

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What’s Actually Going On (aka Should I Be Worried?):

  • Libre is about to glam up $500 million of Telegram’s debt and parade it on the TON blockchain as the spanking new Telegram Bond Fund (TBF). Yes, bonds, but make it ‘crypto chic’ 🕺.
  • The gang at Libre have already jazzed up over $200 million in assets for, you know, just your average super powerful institutions like BlackRock, Brevan Howard, etc. No big deal. 🙄

If you’ve ever lain awake at night, gnawing on a carrot stick and wondering when Telegram debt would finally go designer and hit the blockchain runway, well—surprise! Libre, possibly the most well-connected firm you’ve never heard of (“Oh, we just hang out with Brevan Howard and Hamilton Lane sometimes, nbd”), plans to bundle up $500 million of Telegram bonds and plonk them onto the TON network. This whole thing is called the Telegram Bond Fund, or TBF, which sounds glamorous enough that Bridget Jones herself would probably want a piece, just for the acronym bragging rights.

Here’s where it gets spicy: these bonds (out of Telegram’s, cough, tiny $2.4 billion smorgasbord of outstanding IOUs) will suddenly become accessible to accredited investors. We’re talking yield products you can show off at parties, or—much less glamorously—use as collateral for on-chain borrowing. Nothing says “party animal” quite like using your Telegram bond tokens as loan security, honestly.

Avtar Sehra, Libre’s CEO, describes it—possibly while wearing a sharply tailored suit—as a “fixed income fund, but tokenized.” So when you buy into the fund, you get yourself some glamorous blockchain units on the TON chain, which basically means you’re now financially involved with Telegram in the techiest, coolest way since you accidentally joined that meme sticker chat in 2018. It’s all about making bonds less, well, dusty and more “blockchain, baby!”

Feel like you’re constantly hearing about stuff being tokenized these days? You’re not alone. Suddenly, assets you’d normally struggle to explain to your nan are being spun onto the blockchain faster than you can mutter “DeFi” into your phone at 2am. Traditional finance is being swept up like Colin Firth in wet trousers, and nobody’s quite sure where it leads, but it sure sounds impressive.

Apparently, Libre’s customers are all about instant gratification: they want their money market products wrapped up fast, or they want something sounding dangerously edgy from within ecosystems they’re into. (“Tokenized bonds? Oh, I only invest in those.”)

Fun fact: TON was actually cooked up by Telegram back in Ye Days Before Crypto Became Boring, but now it’s spread its wings and operates independently. Their new hobby? Trying to drag Telegram’s nearly billion users into the bright, blinking, slightly confusing land of on-chain assets.

If you missed it between the eye-watering numbers, Libre’s already done its magic for $200 million+ in assets from BlackRock, Brevan Howard, and the rest of the institutional glitterati. This whole “tokenization” caper isn’t just for show (or so they say). Sehra insists it’s about unlocking utility. No more lifeless pieces of paper; we’re talking living, breathing digital bonds—much better for flexing in your group chat. 💅

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2025-04-30 09:18