Growing up in Malawi, Grey Jabesi spent most of his childhood sleeping on a sand floor. But rather than pursue a path of hard labor on tobacco or cattle farms, Jabesi dreamed of a different life. Upon graduating from high school, he traveled over 2,000 miles to Cape Town, where he marked time as a gardener and laundromat operator while looking for a big break. The eureka moment came in 2013, when Jabesi attended a Reddit AMA where Bill Gates praised Bitcoin’s potential for regular folks to make routine payments in developing countries. The youngster was sold. He started accepting Bitcoin for odd jobs in coding and graphic design. Realizing that he could exchange the signature crypto for U.S. dollars and local currencies, he pivoted to full-time day trader and crypto evangelist.
Jabesi’s trading flourished over the next several years as Bitcoin’s price kept surging. In 2020, he learned of the “Affiliate Program” offered by Binance, the company that in just two years had raced from nowhere to reign as the world’s largest crypto exchange. Having built a following of upwards of 8,000 followers across platforms, Jabesi qualified as a recruiter who could earn big commissions on the trades placed by every user he attracted to register on the global Binance platform. With every trade his referred users make, Binance sends Jabesi rewards equivalent to as much as 40% in commissions. Now, Jabesi says, he makes between $3,000 and $5,000 every month. “I’m from Africa, and if someone sees me standing next to a Lambo dressed nice, at some place that they could never imagine themselves, it will make them believe that ‘Okay, this crypto thing seems to be real, if this guy can make it, I can, too,’” says Jabesi.
