In February, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s Founder and former Chief Executive announced a Bitcoin Trust (BTrust) fund in collaboration with rapper Jay-Z worth over 24 Million USD for development in Africa and India. BTrust is a fund with 500 BTC capital base worth $24,426,230, when pegged to late Monday’s market price $48,815.35, and will be managed by four Africans, without oversight from Dorsey or Jay Z.
In a statement shared on Twitter on Wednesday, Dec. 15, Dorsey revealed the identities of the BTrust board, three of whom are Nigerians; Abubakar Nur Khalil, Obi Nwosu, Ojoma Ochai, and South African, Carla Kirk-Cohen. Dorsey described the four individuals as “inspirational”, noting that it would now be their collective responsibility to map out the operating principles that will define how the Bitcoin Trust Fund would be administered. In his tweet he also announced that the four will work towards defining the operating principles as they think about how to best distribute the 500 BTC towards development efforts.
Dorsey had called for application into the board of the fund and received over 7,000 application but the three Nigerian youths and a South African stood out. The youth will now be involved in deciding who among the applicants from Nigeria and India deserves to benefit.
Meet the 4 BTrust board members
Obi Nwosu is the Co-founder of Coinfloor, a serd-level cryptocurrency startup, which has raised $300,000 in funding round.
Ojoma Ochai is the Managing Partner at CcHUBCreative (Co-Creation Hub), a technology innovation workspace, accelerating startup growth in Nigeria and selected part in Africa – CcHUB has raised $5.5 million to aid its operation.
Abubakar Nur Khalil is a bitcoin core contributor, and had received $50,000 in BTC for his work on Bitcoin wallet software from Human Rights Foundation (HRF) in May 2021. Khalil is also the CTO of Recursive Capital, an early-stage crypto VC fund, supporting founders building critical web 3.0 infrastructure.
Carla Kirk-Cohen is a South African software engineer who previously worked for Luno, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Africa. She currently works for Lightning Labs, according to information available on her LinkedIn page.