Jack Dorsey: Meet the 3 Nigerians that will Lead Twitter Founder’s Bitcoin Trust Fund

Three Nigerians, Abubakar Nur Khalil, Obi Nwosu, and Ojoma Ochai, have been appointed by Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to the Board of his Bitcoin Trust Fund (BTrust).  The fund is expected to be used for bitcoin development in Africa and India.

A South African, Carla Kirk-Cohen, was also appointed. Jack’s team selected the four of them among 7000 applicants. The four are said to have contributed to the development of bitcoin in Africa.

“They’ll now work towards defining the operating principles as they think about how to best distribute the 500 bitcoin towards development efforts,” Jack wrote in a tweet dated December 16, 2021.

Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter CEO last month, co-founded the Bitcoin Trust Fund with American rapper Jay Z.

More about the 3 selected Nigerians

Abubakar Nur Khalil 

He is a Kaduna-based researcher and web developer. He is also the founder and CEO of Recursive Capital, which invests in developing Africa’s web 3.0 ecosystem.

Khalil, 22, is an African Bitcoin Core Contributor who began contributing when he was 19 years old. He got $50,000 in bitcoin from the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) in May 2021 for his work on BItcoin wallet software.

Obi Nwosu

He is in charge of business strategy and Coinfloor’s financial and cryptocurrency experts team. Coinfloor is a seed-stage cryptocurrency startup that has raised $300,000 in a fundraising round.

Obi was formerly the Founder and CEO of Supalocal. He also had top positions at ebookers.com and WeeWorld, where he oversaw the establishment of a virtual currency that 30 million people now utilise.

“Thanks, @jack and the team. Super excited to be a part of this vision, organisation, and mission and to finally be able to talk about it”, Nwosu said in reaction to his appointment.

Ojoma Ochai 

She is the Managing Partner of CcHUBCreative (Co-Creation Hub), a technological innovation workshop that helps startups flourish in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. CcHUB has raised $5.5 million to help with its operations.

She worked for a variety of organisations, including the British Council, UNESCO, the World Bank- Growth and Employment Program, the African Technology and Creative Group (ATCG), and various governments in Africa and beyond, in and with partners and teams all over the world, particularly in Africa and the United Kingdom.

Ojoma has a track record of directing strategy, large-scale programs, and change management, forming strategic and operational alliances, implementing digital transformation, promoting and mainstreaming diversity and inclusion, and managing globally distributed teams.

How will Jack Dorsey’s Trust Fund work in Nigeria?

While the BTrust funds will be distributed in India and Africa, it’s unclear how it will operate in Nigeria, where cryptocurrency activities are prohibited by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

BTrust is a fund with a 500BTC capital base worth N10,014,265,775,40 ($24,426,230). When pegged to late Monday’s market price of $48,815,35. The four Africans will oversee the funds without Dorsey or Jay-Z’s supervision.

Despite Nigerian authorities cracking down on cryptocurrency trading with a ban by the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dorsey claimed in June 2021 that “the people of Nigeria will lead bitcoin”. 

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