Startup Investor Yele Badamosi Joins Binance Labs, Venture Arm of the World’s Largest Crypto Exchange

Nigerian investor and founder of venture firm, Microtraction, Yele Badamosi has been revealed as the latest member of the Binance Labs team. Binance Labs is the research and development arm of the Binance, the world’s virtual currency exchange platform.

1/ I'm incredibly excited to finally announce that I'll be joining the @binance family as a director of @binancelabs https://t.co/AKT1KWGslU

— Yele Bademosi (@YeleBademosi) January 14, 2019

As a member of Binance Labs, Mr Badamosi will work remotely from Lagos, Nigeria. His work is aimed at developing Africa’s blockchain ecosystem. He will lead the hunt for blockchain projects and solutions across the continent.

According to a post on Binance’s official blog, Mr Badamosi’s thesis at Binance Labs is on two areas. First, is to create trustless governance, economic and financial systems for Africa. The second is to enable capital formation and efficient capital markets.

“On a high level, my mandate is to leverage blockchain to accelerate Africa’s transition to a sustainable and developed economy. I believe very strongly that blockchain adoption will come from frontier markets that will leapfrog leapfrog current economic, political and financial systems taking us into a better and bring brighter future,” Badamosi says.

In light of this, an important role he’ll play for the team is leading the Lagos chapter of the Binance Incubation Program. the Binance Incubation Program is a 10-week accelerator program for innovators in the crypto-currency and blockchain arena. It’s still new though and it’s expected to begin taking in cohorts as soon as March 2019.

5/ Blockchains are the first techno-social innovation that enables the coordination and cooperation of individuals/entities towards a common objective without a central authority or a trusted third party

— Yele Bademosi (@YeleBademosi) January 14, 2019

Mr Badamosi will assist and support these cohorts to deliver viable blockchain solutions that are both profitable and socially responsible.

Now of course, Mr Badamosi is no starter in the blockchain industry. As an investor, his portfolio contains not only fintechs but also blockchains startups like Bitkoin Afrika and BuyCoins Africa. His entry into the Binance Labs team is however a big recognition, considering his VC firm is barely two years old.

Potential Conflict of Interest?

But his selection as member of the Binance Labs team does raise questions about potential conflict of interest.

For one thing, Yele Badamosi will still remain as head of his VC firm Microtraction. This means he will continue to pursue investments in blockchain startups. Yet, Binance Labs is not just a research community, it is also a venture arm committed to “investing, incubating, empowering Blockchain and cryptocurrency entrepreneurs.”

It’s difficult to not see a situation where Mr Badamosi’s insider knowledge could prove beneficial to a portfolio startup and thus bring about possible conflict. More so when you consider that BuyCoins Africa is an exchange like Binance, only smaller.

We’ve reached out to Mr Badamosi to get his view and will update this article with his response.