Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey has announced board members of ₿Trust, a bitcoin joint venture with rapper, Jay-Z. Earlier in the year, Dorsey reportedly provided a Google form link for board member applications, saying he needed (only) three board members, and that the mission of ₿Trust is to “make Bitcoin the Internet’s currency.”
The joint venture is aimed at funding Bitcoin development with initial focus on Africa and India and on its newly announced 4 person board are Nigerians; Ojoma Ochai, Obi Nwosu and Abubakar Nur Khalil. The fourth member is South African Carla Kirk-Cohen. The four were selected from a pool of 7,000 applicants.
Ojoma Ochai is Director, Arts and Creative Economy Programmes for British Council in Sub Saharan Africa and Managing Partner at CcHUBCreative while Obi Nwosu is CEO and co-founder of Coinfloor, the UK’s longest-running Bitcoin exchange. Abubakar Nur Khalil is a Bitcoin core contributor and CTO, Recursive Capital and Carla Kirk-Cohen is a software engineer at Lightning Labs having once worked at Luno.
Jack Dorsey said on Twitter, “they’ll now work towards defining the operating principles as they think about how to best distribute the 500 bitcoin towards development efforts.” The 500 bitcoin he is referring to are the units donated by him and Jay-Z to set up ₿Trust early 2021.
Meanwhile, Dorsey’s payment company Square, which was largely responsible for his exit from Twitter, has now been rebranded as Block. This is not unconnected to his decision to explore crypto even more.
