• Altvest plans $210M raise to adopt bitcoin as treasury asset
• Would be Africa’s first listed firm to bet treasury on crypto
• Seeks cross-border listings; crypto use rising 52% in region

South African company Altvest Capital Ltd., which is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, plans to raise $210 million to buy bitcoin and make it its main treasury asset, its founder and CEO Warren Wheatley announced in a Bloomberg interview on Monday. If the plan goes through, it would be the first publicly traded African company to base its financial strategy on the cryptocurrency.

While companies typically hold their reserves in cash, and sometimes in gold, Altvest now wants to hold them primarily in bitcoin. These reserves usually serve as a cushion to fund investments or absorb financial shocks. By switching to bitcoin, Altvest is betting that the digital asset, while highly volatile, will act as a safe-haven asset and an investment catalyst in the long term.

Warren Wheatley said the operation would be accompanied by a name change to Africa Bitcoin Corp. He said the goal is to build a cryptocurrency treasury reserve, comparable to strategies adopted by groups like MicroStrategy in the United States or Metaplanet Inc. in Japan, which saw their stock market valuation soar after converting part of their cash holdings to bitcoin.

"Pension funds, retirement annuities, unit trusts and others usually cannot directly buy Bitcoin. But by buying our shares they will now be able to get exposure in a regulated way through equity," said the CEO of the company, which has a track record as a financial services firm specializing in financing African SMEs and alternative assets. According to its website, it has already raised and deployed more than 500 million rands (about $28 million) in SMEs, hotel projects, and various sectors.

The company is seeking funding from local and foreign investors and also plans to list on international stock exchanges. It also intends to list in Namibia, Botswana, and Kenya to broaden access to its shares for savers in the region.

A Risky Bet with High Stakes

Altvest's project comes amid a context where the use of cryptocurrencies is growing rapidly on the continent, but mostly informally. According to the 2025 Global Adoption Index published by Chainalysis earlier this month, Nigeria and Ethiopia are in the global Top 20 for adoption, with Nigeria ranking sixth, driven by the use of bitcoin as a store of value against inflation. In sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, adoption grew by 52% between July 2024 and June 2025, the source said.

Commercial use is also on the rise, according to a report published by NFTEvening in April. According to that report, the number of African merchants accepting cryptocurrency payments increased by 45% in 2024 to 768 points of sale, including 584 in South Africa.

If Altvest's plans are realized, they could mark a new stage in this dynamic, formalizing a movement that has so far been driven by individuals, merchants, and some fintechs into the regulated financial sphere. Nevertheless, they still raise numerous questions, including how the company, which is currently worth only 52.8 million rands (about $3 million), will be able to raise an amount far exceeding that value. Furthermore, will African institutional investors, subject to strict prudential rules, follow suit? Meanwhile, bitcoin has been on an upward trend for several months and even passed the $120,000 mark last July, compared to about $55,000 in September 2024. At the time of writing, the king of cryptocurrencies is trading at more than $111,000.

Louis-Nino Kansoun