👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – 72 hours to report fraud

Howdy.

There were two interesting acquisition news from Silicon Valley yesterday: Bending Spoons (nobody knows what these guys do, I promise) agreed to acquire NYSE-listed event-tech company, Eventbrite, for $500 million all-cash. At first glance, it’s easy to say Eventbrite was undervalued when we consider the strength of deals like Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of crypto startup Bridge, early this year.

But here’s the reality: Except for three quarters (Q4 2022, Q2 2024, and Q3 2025), Eventbrite has been a loss-making business since its 2018 listing. At Tuesday’s close of market, its stock was trading at $4.43, down more than 86% in the last five years. Eventbrite’s market cap stands at $433 million. So, good deal or bad deal?

In another sector, Kraken finally acquires Backed Finance (*pretends to be shocked), the company powering tokenised stocks for several crypto companies in Africa. Up next? A 2026 IPO for Kraken.

Let’s dive in.

—Emmanuel

Nigeria’s fraud problem has been rising faster than the system designed to contain it. Data from the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) shows fraud losses increased by 603% in Q1 2025, with 12,347 cases reported. Now, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is tightening compliance rules with its new guidelines.

The big news: Customers now have a 72-hour window to report fraudulent transfers, and financial operators get a fixed 16-working-day cycle to investigate and issue refunds.

Here’s how it’ll work: Once a customer flags a suspicious transfer, their bank must respond within 24 hours, freeze any traceable funds, and launch an investigation. If multiple institutions are involved, which is common with a wallet-to-bank-to-wallet obfuscation path that fraudulent money typically flows, the originating bank must alert other institutions within 30 minutes. Every institution in the chain has fixed timelines to cooperate, escalate, and return funds.

Important disclaimer: Customers can only get refunds if they report the incident within 72 hours and unknowingly shared PINs, passwords, or authorisation codes. Institutions are allowed to deny refunds where clear negligence is shown, but they must document and justify it.

Not Nigeria’s first fraud fight. The CBN has been tightening the screws on fraud for over a decade. It set up the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NEFF) back in 2011 to get banks talking to each other about fraud issues instead of fighting fraud alone. By 2015, every financial institution was required to run a dedicated fraud desk. In 2023, the rules got even tougher as no account or wallet could open without a Bank Verification Number (BVN) or national identification number (NIN). 

In 2024, the Central Bank empowered the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the country’s payment switch, to directly debit bank accounts that received fraudulent money. This new framework is the next chapter in a long-running effort to reduce fraud occurrence.

But it’s not final yet. The draft of these guidelines is open for comments for three weeks before it can be adopted.

During a time when Michael Saylor’s Strategy—the poster face for Bitcoin treasury companies, which hold the digital asset as part of their corporate reserve—is facing scrutiny and drawing comparisons to a “Ponzi scheme,” South Africa’s Africa Bitcoin Corporation (ABC) is jetting off to Germany.

ABC, an SME financing company that holds over 3 Bitcoins in its corporate reserve, listed on Germany’s Börse Frankfurt as part of a broader multi-exchange expansion. It also made that push to Europe to target retail and institutional investors who are more “educated” about Bitcoin treasury companies, and it plans to unlock capital to list across more African bourses.

Here’s the kicker with Bitcoin treasury companies today: It has been a slow couple of months for the crypto investment market since October. Bitcoin has fallen sharply from its all-time high, and share prices of Strategy-owned exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have plunged more than 80% this year. This shows how short-term Bitcoin declines can hit these companies and shake investor confidence during bear runs.

Second, a key metric called market net asset value (mNAV) is getting more attention. mNAV compares a company’s market value to the value of its Bitcoin holdings, and ABC’s sits at 56.06. The figure looks enormous next to Strategy’s 1.15 because ABC holds very little Bitcoin relative to its market cap, so the ratio moves dramatically, while Strategy’s large reserves keep its mNAV more stable.

Investors should also note that these shares often trade below the Bitcoin price because the market factors in operating losses, dilution risk, thin liquidity, and small Bitcoin treasuries. For now, investors shouldn’t panic about ABC’s mNAV; it simply doesn’t reflect much until the company holds meaningful Bitcoin. ABC’s cash position also stood at R29,733 ($1,737) in August 2025, down from R44,924 ($2,625) the previous year, reflecting its shifting stance.

So, here’s the red pill/blue pill question: Should you rather buy and hold Bitcoin directly or invest in treasury companies? Either one you choose, you need to think about your investment in the long term.

Nigeria’s telecoms sector is in its comeback era, the kind that’s felt in the economy. The latest gross domestic product (GDP) report shows telecoms pulling more weight than it did last year, as it grew by 3.98% (year-on-year) in real terms in Q3 2025.

What caused this surge? For one, telecom companies earned more from each subscriber (well, duh! Earlier in the year, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved a 50% tariff hike in telecom services like calls, SMS, and internet bundles). This year also saw a surge in demand as telecom subscribers grew to 173.54 million in September from 171.57 million in August. 

Plus, big operators in the market suddenly started posting profits again. MTN grew from a ₦514.9 billion ($355.49 million) loss in 2024 to a ₦750.2 billion ($517.94 million) profit in Q3 2025, while Airtel reported $376 million in profit after FX gains. With their balance sheets back in the green, their contribution to the economy jumped. And that “contributing more” bit means exactly what it sounds like. Higher revenues translate into higher taxes, licence fees, levies, and all the other dues that flow back into government coffers.

Why should anyone care? The telecoms sector is the backbone of other fast-growing parts of Nigeria’s digital economy, including fintech, entertainment, e-commerce, and logistics. If the telecoms sector stays healthy, the vision to diversify Nigeria’s economy from the oil and gas sector may suddenly look more feasible.

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Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecom company, is raising the stakes for the country’s broadband war with the launch of a token-based home internet and public Wi-Fi service. The company says the new service will directly target underserved urban users with irregular incomes in Kenya’s low-income broadband segment. 

This move is designed to bridge the digital divide for millions who cannot afford standard monthly plans.

How it works: The offering introduces affordable monthly fibre plans starting at just KES 800 ($6.15), alongside micro-priced tokens for both home fibre and public Wi-Fi. This pay-as-you-go model allows households to pay for internet access in small, manageable amounts, with public Wi-Fi tokens ranging from KES 15 to KES 100 ($0.12 –$0.77).

The big picture: Safaricom is aiming to disrupt Kenya’s informal internet market, long dominated by street resellers and budget internet service providers (ISPs) like Poa and Mawingu. These existing providers typically charge much higher rates, and Safaricom’s offering undercuts them with these new token-based deals, which provide a more affordable, regulated, and reliable service than the existing informal networks.

The move forces smaller vendors to lower prices or exit the market altogether, ultimately giving low-income consumers a more stable and scalable connectivity option. By starting in affordable housing areas like Mukuru Boma Yangu, Safaricom is aligning its immense infrastructure and market power with its digital inclusion goals, turning connectivity into a daily utility rather than a monthly luxury.

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The World Wide Web3

Source:

Coin Name	Current Value	Day	Month
Bitcoin	$93,566	+ 7.51%	– 13.03%
Ether	$3,063	+ 9.26%	– 17.96%
Yooldo	$0.4032	– 8.84%	+ 92.71%
Solana	$142.77	+ 12.81%	– 9.10%

* Data as of 06.45 AM WAT, December 3, 2025.

Written by: Opeyemi Kareem, Fancy Goodman, and Emmanuel Nwosu

Edited by: Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade