The chief executive who put bitcoin on an African listed balance sheet for the first time has left the company he co-founded. Warren Wheatley resigned as chief executive and as an employee of Africa Bitcoin Corporation with effect from 21 September, and the board accepted it the next day. The company gave no reason and disclosed no terms.
He had been away from the desk since the end of August. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority debarred him for 20 years, which bars him from financial services for that period, and the company put him on precautionary leave for an initial month, subject to board review. He resigned before the month was up. Stafford Masie, Google's first country manager in South Africa, stays on as interim chief executive while the board looks for a permanent one.
Fifty shares, or a false picture of demand
The regulator and the man it penalised describe the same four days in September 2022 very differently. The FSCA found that between the 5th and the 8th of that month Wheatley acted in concert with his wife, Tatum Keshwar-Wheatley, and with chief investment officer Akshay Karan, in trading that created an artificially inflated share price in Altvest Capital, a false or deceptive appearance of demand, supply or trading activity, or both. The findings, published in early September this year, record a contravention of section 80(1)(a) of the Financial Markets Act.
The penalties followed the shareholdings. Wheatley and WGW Capital, a company linked to him that held about a third of Altvest at the time, were fined R5 million jointly and severally. Keshwar-Wheatley and her investment company were fined R3 million, and Karan R2 million. All three were debarred for 20 years.
Wheatley's own account of those days is three trades. In an open letter to the board, staff and shareholders, he wrote that he had been testing a stockbroker platform that had historically not functioned correctly, and that three trades for a combined 50 shares worth R301 went through during the testing. "Fifty shares. Three hundred and one rand. A fine of millions. Debarment," he wrote. He says the resignation is voluntary, carries no admission of wrongdoing, and does not end his challenge at the Financial Services Tribunal.
The company he leaves behind
The company he leaves is small and unusual. Altvest bought a single bitcoin in February 2025 and called the purchase a systems test, then proposed the name change that September, with plans to raise up to $210 million to buy more, modelled on Michael Saylor's Strategy. It moved from the JSE's alternate exchange to the main board in May, and held 5.5331 bitcoin after its most recent disclosed purchase. The shares are thinly traded, which leaves the price exposed to sharp moves on small volumes.
All of that came later: the trading the FSCA investigated happened about two and a half years before the first bitcoin was bought. The company says Wheatley's tribunal proceedings are personal to him and continue independently of it, and that it has nothing further to announce on the other two positions.
