Several Helicarrier (previously Buycoins) Founders have departed the company, according to corporate documents available to BrandSpur digital news platform.
Olatomiwa Lasebikan’s appointment as a Director had already been terminated in 2021, while Ireoluwa Aderinokun’s appointment was scheduled to expire on June 30, 2023, according to the filing dated January 8, 2023.
The sole surviving Founder of Helicarrier is Timi Ajiboye. But on February 3, 2025, he revealed that he would be joining The Browser firm, the firm that created Arc Browser, on a full-time basis. This raised more concerns about the company’s future.
Y Combinator’s directory currently shows Helicarrier as an operating startup, but the discontinuation of important products like Buycoins and Buycoins Pro portends difficult times for the eight-year-old company. From Helicarrier to Buycoins to Bitkoin One of the first cryptocurrency companies in Nigeria was Helicarrier. Initially established as Bitkoin in 2017, it gave Africans access to local payment rails for cryptocurrency trading. Later, in 2018, the business obtained an undisclosed sum of money from Microtraction.
The firm changed its name from Bitkoin to Buycoins after being accepted into Y Combinator that same year. It changed its name once more, becoming Helicarrier, four years later.
As Ajiboye clarified in a Medium post from 2021, “Buycoins doesn’t do a good job of telegraphing all that we’ve become.”
According to him, the business has grown from a straightforward peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading website to a more comprehensive ecosystem with a variety of goods, such as Buycoins, Buycoins Pro, Sendcash Pay, Sendcash, and NGNT. The company’s goal of using digital currencies to financially connect Africans worldwide was supposed to be supported by these items.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a decree prohibiting banks from supporting cryptocurrency-related transactions in 2021, which presented serious challenges to Helicarrier’s objective. Known as the “crypto ban,” this rule prevented customers wishing to purchase or trade cryptocurrencies from depositing naira to cryptocurrency businesses.
After this governmental crackdown, the collapse of FTX in 2022 caused additional turmoil in the larger crypto business, which resulted in a protracted market decline. Several cryptocurrency companies, including Bundle, were forced to shut shop in July 2023 as a result of the meltdown. Although Helicarrier did not shut down entirely, it did shut down its cryptocurrency exchange for expert traders, Buycoins Pro.
The business told its customers in a statement: “Regrettably, we must inform you that Buycoins Pro will be sunsetted in the coming days. As part of this process, we kindly request your attention to the following important information.”
Mariblock noted that behavior on the exchange’s official Telegram channel indicated the company was having trouble producing enough trading volume, despite Helicarrier’s assurance that users could still trade using Buycoins’ over-the-counter service.
Continuing, Mariblock had this to say: “In a discussion between the group’s admin and Buycoins Pro users on April 18, 2023, customers complained that the exchange does not have enough trading volume to fill their orders.”
Similar issues that caused the closure of other well-known African cryptocurrency businesses including Bundle, LocalCryptos, and LocalBitcoins seem to be plaguing Helicarrier. With its original founders no longer leading the company, the once-promising startup’s future is still up in the air.
