BizNews Radio

You're not slow. You go fast. Stafford, part of the stated intention of Africa Bitcoin Corporation was to raise more than $200 million to invest in Bitcoin. How has this development of the past week impacted those plans? So let me make it clear: the number that got parroted around and keeps being echoed right now is interesting.

Degree said it as explicitly as that. But our intention was to raise a significant amount of capital to acquire Bitcoin and truly create that flywheel where we lend against Bitcoin at a sub 5%. We deploy it into the private credit book, into ACOF impacting SMMEs, and through the proceeds of that, create that flywheel. That is still underway. That is still being executed against. We just took an extremely conservative approach.

Approach as we executed against that. Remember, Bitcoin is very novel. We had to make sure that South African Reserve Bank subdivisions inside of that institution were comfortable. We had to make sure that the JSC was comfortable. And we did it very, very conservatively. And the reason we did it very, very conservatively is because we had to report back on every single process and step associated with that. So acquiring the Bitcoin, doing private placements around the equity. When the Bitcoin comes in, what do you do?

You're doing with the Bitcoin? How is it moving through the process of being considered from a compliance perspective? Where is it being stored? The custody associated with it, the reportability, the accountability of it, and then the technological architecture to support the strategy and the underpinning of that. This is not a simple thing to do. The opportunity to do it is absolutely significant. The moat that we have is that we are a publicly traded company, that the JSC has watched and allowed to do this, and we've done it successfully.

We've got five point something Bitcoin on the balance sheet. People look at that and go, surely that should be bigger. No, because we had to take it through the process of ensuring that the board was comfortable with the policies, the procedures, the technology, the governance, the compliance. It's complex. It's not easy. And I can't do any forward-looking statements associated with this, but that is still a very important part of our strategy that we're going to execute against. And I'm.

I'm personally, you know my position on Bitcoin. I'm still very bullish on the asset. And it's not from number go up, number go down. That's not why I'm bullish on Bitcoin. It's the point that this is the first time Africa has ever had a piece of collateral that it could go anywhere in the world with and lend against sub 5%. This was an unlock. If you take a look at where we are in South Africa, we've got high yields with very low capital.