How A ‘Tiny’ Trade Four Years Ago Shook Africa’s Biggest Bitcoin Company

Africa Bitcoin Corporation, the continent’s first listed company to adopt bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, was days away from a landmark secondary listing on London’s Aquis Growth Market. Instead, its founder and CEO Warren Wheatley, his wife Tatum Keshwar-Wheatley, and chief investment officer Akshay Karan are now banned from South Africa’s financial services industry for 20 years.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority dropped its enforcement action on 30 August 2026, revealing that the three executives coordinated trades over just four days in September 2022, when the company was still called Altvest Capital and listed on the Cape Town Stock Exchange.

According to the FSCA, they created an artificially inflated share price and a false impression of demand. The regulator imposed a combined ZAR 10 M in penalties: ZAR 5 M on Wheatley and his company WGW Capital, ZAR 3 M on Keshwar-Wheatley and her firm, and ZAR 2 M on Karan. All three have been debarred for two decades.

The trades happened in September 2022, just four months after Altvest’s initial listing. At the time, the stock was thinly traded, meaning relatively modest transactions could swing the price significantly. The executives have disputed the findings, arguing the amounts involved were tiny and that they were merely testing whether tax was being applied correctly. The FSCA rejected this, saying the issue was not the amounts but the harm caused and the intent behind the trades.