Meet Abubakar Nur Khalil, one of the three Nigerians selected to lead Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z’s Bitcoin Trust

December 2021 was a turning point for four young Africans who were selected by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to head the Dorsey and Jay-Z Bitcoin Trust.

Three of the four Africans are Nigerians: Obi Nwosu, Ojoma Ochai, and Abubakar Nur Khalil. The fours selected participants, including South Africa's Carla Kirk-Cohen, beat more than 7,000 other participants in the competition. In a statement via his Twitter account, Dorsey said the selected board members will "work towards defining the operating principles as they think about how to best distribute the 500 bitcoins towards development efforts."

Nwosu is the co-founder of Nigerian-based fintech, CoinFloor, a cryptocurrency startup that has raised about $300,000 in funding rounds. Ochai is the managing partner at CcHUBCreative, a co-creation and technology innovation workspace, accelerating startup in Nigeria. It has successfully raised about $5.5 million to grow its network and operations. Khalil is a Kaduna-based tech and bitcoin enthusiast, and a bitcoin core contributor and has reviewed over 60 pull requests. In May 2021, he received $50,000 worth of BTC for his work on Bitcoin wallet software from Human Rights Foundation (HRF).

Btrust is a move by Dorsey and Jay-Z to deploy 500 bitcoin worth $21.5 million to develop currency across the African continent. According to Dorsey, the trust will operate as a blind irrevocable trust which will take zero direction from donors. In another tweet earlier this month, Dorsey said the trust would "fund #Bitcoin development, initially focused on teams in Africa & India." The goal is to make bitcoin the official internet currency.

Who is Abubakar Nur Khalil?

Abubakar Nur Khalil is a 22-year-old self-taught programmer and Bitcoin enthusiast, based in Kaduna, Nigeria. He is also a contributor on Bitcoin core, which he started in 2019 at the age of 20.

He is the first Nigerian recipient of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) Bitcoin Development Fund grant, aimed at the development of Bitcoin wallet. Khalil, along with other Bitcoin enthusiasts launched “Qala” a crypto startup. The goal of the new startup is to train the next generation of Bitcoin and LN developers across the African continent.

In addition to his ground-breaking success to co-head the Dorsey and Jay-Z Bitcoin trust, Khalil was also appointed the new chief executive officer of Recursive Capital, a Kaduna-based fintech company. Khalil now heads the research and development unit of the firm.