How Did SBF Convince West Africans Crypto Was Their Future?

At least Madoff's clients were rich.

- REEVES WIEDEMAN

ON NOVEMBER 3, DAYS before his cryptocurrency empire collapsed, Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted a hearty FTX welcome to a promising new customer base. “Hello, West Africa!” he wrote, sharing the news that FTX was accepting a new currency, West African CFA francs, and that anyone in the region looking for somewhere to park their money and trade a bit of crypto could now open an account with his company. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for just 2 percent of global cryptocurrency trading, but adoption has picked up in recent years, and crypto enthusiasts have long seen the continent as a proving ground for some of crypto’s practical applications, like facilitating remittances. Many FTX users in Africa didn’t trade bitcoin or ethereum and instead used the platform simply to convert local currencies into less volatile U.S. dollars, which they could store while collecting the 8 percent annual interest rate FTX was advertising right up to its demise. The deal seemed almost too good to be true, and a Twitter user who went by BeerLife—“Lover of Beer, Blockchain, and Bull Dog”—responded to SBF’s greeting that day with a warning: “Beware West Africa, just like every other westerners you’ve dealt with this one is only looking to steal your money.”