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Comment by phantom_oracle | Hacker News Reader

South Africa is a small economy relative to US, EU(block) or China and has large income disparity(small, very wealthy upper/middle class).

$3.6B = ZAR51.17B (xe.com). That seems like a lot of savings for the small upper/middle class.

The name of the crypto company "afri" suggests it might have targeted the African market as a whole.

Can any Africans/South Africans explain how ZAR51.17B of savings accumulated in this crypto company(or scam)?

Is it like Madoff who conned rich people or did these guys manage to reach pensioners and steal their money too?

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With a population of approximately 60 million people that's an average of R850 (approx. $60) per person in SA at the current exchange rate. Obviously only a small fraction of the population are going to have invested. Even if I guess an improbably high number of 1 million investors the losses are R51000 per person (around $3600). That's more than a month's salary even for those just inside the top 1%, since it only takes $3500 per month to be in the top 1% of earners in SA [1].

[1] https://www.goodthingsguy.com/opinion/perspective-salary-sou...

South African here, I’m also wondering how they acquired so much Bitcoin.

The figure is slightly inflated as it’s the value at Bitcoin’s high earlier this year, but it’s still a lot.

My theory is lots of international customers as I don’t see our market being big enough, thumb sucking, but I reckon 2/3 of our country earns less than 500USD a month. Maybe their customers are from other African countries, but it feels unlikely to be enough.

Perhaps they had some “whale” clientele from several different countries.

I wouldn’t personally think the “Afri” in their name is particularly meaningful, it’s just a naming thing, but maybe some people treat it differently.

A lot of might be money laundering from existing crimes, because of weak compliance controls in exchanges and countries like SA.

Heck, the kleptocratic president and his party was robbing the country for a better decade.

> The name of the crypto company "afri" suggests it might have targeted the African market as a whole.

Need someone with context knowledge, but I suppose the name suggests it could also have been targeting Afrikaners in South Africa (ex. "AfriForum"[0])

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfriForum

South African here and although not culturally Afrikaans (I only really know English), I wouldn’t see “Afri” targeting them specifically.

If anything it associates it with Africa and Afrikaaners (like most people of European descent here) identify more as European residents of South Africa, rather than as African. To make clear, Caucasians here will refer to themselves as South African, but not as just African. If someone on the internet told me they were African, (and not in a bad way) I would assume they are of dark colour.

> [...]Afrikaaners (like most people of European descent here) identify more as European residents of South Africa

As someone who used to cross the "Boerewors curtain" daily, interacting with people on both sides, I think you're severely understating how distinct the Afrikaaner identity is, and how (most) Afrikaaners see themselves as having a different heritage from other people of "European descent".

> If someone on the internet told me they were African, (and not in a bad way) I would assume they are of dark colour.

Maybe that's because the former government (that one) used "African" as a race, an not as a geography-based identity: one could be "White", "Colored", "Asian" or "African"

$3.6B is at peak valuation. The actual contributions maybe much lower?

A pyramid scheme in Albania caused a civil war. You do not need crypto for it. Just greed and lack of education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War

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