I just recently spoke to Ray Youssef, CEO of NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) bitcoin trading platform with many other performances, about how NoOnes is empowering its users, what it’s performing in reaction to the Nigerian federal government’s crackdown on Binance P2P and why P2P markets play an important function in satisfying the pledge of bitcoin as a legal tender.
Youssef and the global group at NoOnes are on an objective to end monetary apartheid and to unify the economically disenfranchised around the globe. In the procedure, they’re taking on the old monetary guard, driven by the belief that when individuals can trade easily with one another utilizing bitcoin, the overbearing powers that be will lose their utilize over those residing in establishing economies.
A records of our discussion, gently modified for length and clearness, follows below.
Frank Corva: What is the main objective of NoOnes?
Ray Youssef: It’s the world’s very first peer-to-peer dispersed country. I see myself as a chief supporter, not simply CEO — somebody that is representing individuals. We wish to onboard a billion residents in the next 6 years.
By residents, I imply engaged clients. They’re not simply utilizing it as soon as every 2 weeks. They need to be deeply engaged for this to be triumphant. That implies a billion day-to-day engaged individuals. It’s a remarkable number when you think about Binance has 120 million users and about 2-3% of them are most likely regular monthly active. We’re attempting to get a hundred times that.
Corva: How lots of people are presently utilizing it?
Youssef: We have about 400,000 active users, which is quite incredible. My old business had like a quarter million active [users]. The objective here is not simply to get empty signups. The objective here is to make individuals active.
Corva: You’ve discussed how apps like NoOnes and Bitcoin can assist end “financial apartheid.” Could you specify this term?
Youssef: Financial apartheid is the most wicked kind of apartheid. It’s undetectable chains that have actually essentially kept the huge bulk of the world bad for over a a century, and individuals aren’t even mindful [of it]. It manifests in a lot of various methods.
Broken overregulation [is one form of it]. Africa is the most overregulated area of the world. M-Pesa is the leading mobile wallet in Kenya. 98.8% of Kenyans have an M-Pesa wallet. M-Pesa is so huge it’s broadened beyond Kenya to Ghana, South African and other African nations, however you still can’t send out cash from an M-Pesa wallet in Kenya to an M-Pesa wallet in Ghana or South Africa.
You are caught in the economy where your passport was provided. You can’t access liquidity in other nations, and they can’t access liquidity in your nation.
The issue gets back at worse when you think about commerce in between business. Pan-European trade is at 69%. In Asia, I believe it’s 59%. Latin America falls to 30%. And Africa, formally it’s at 13%.
But think what? The genuine number is less than 1%. Because because 13%, they count all these American and Western corporations that simply have regional names. Intracontinental African trade is at less than 1%. If that does not shout monetary apartheid, what does?
Corva: Speaking of Africa, let’s discuss what’s taking place in Nigeria. The federal government took 2 Binance executives captive. In reaction, Binance has actually stopped supporting the Naira and has actually closed down its P2P trading platform in Nigeria. NoOnes is presently making it possible for Binance P2P traders to move their P2P trading profiles from Binance to NoOnes. How is this going?
Youssef: Traders are extremely pleased to have their feedback imported over. It’s extremely essential. Reputation is substantial in this company, particularly if you’re an OTC trader. [So,] we made an unique landing page for all the peer-to-peer refugees.
They’re extremely pleased to come over and have the ability to talk with the CEO straight in a Telegram and WhatsApp channel. That goes a long method.
Binance is being torn apart by the United States federal government today. Why did they choose this guy (Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Binance’s previous CEO) so hard? Were they upset he was front-running his own users? No. They didn’t appreciate that at all.
What they actually appreciated is that CZ and Binance enabled everybody plebs — everybody peasants out there — to have monetary gain access to through peer-to-peer trading. The truth that there’s 120 million individuals on the very same internal cash transmission network and that CZ has all these exit ramps to regional cash all over the world set them off.
Remember the guy they followed before CZ? Ross.
Corva: Ross Ulbricht?
Youssef: Yes, sir. Peer-to-peer is the opponent, and it constantly has actually been. They’ve had Ross in prison for over 11 years. He simply set up a site like Amazon or eBay where anybody might trade anybody with anything.
[Sure,] some individuals offered some weed on there. For that, they comprised this story about [his involvement in a murder conspiracy]. This is all trash. This is a sweet, innocent kid. And they put him in prison for 2 life sentences.
Corva: And Sam Bankman-Fried just got 25 years.
Youssef: The just factor Sam Bankman-Fried got at any time at all was since some abundant individuals lost some cash. This is the only factor that Madoff got at any time at all. too. If he was robbing bad individuals, nobody would provide a damn. But Ross Ulbricht, guy, they struck him with whatever since they could. They wished to send out a message: “Hey, if you try to make global free marketplaces — real commerce — happen, we’re going to destroy you. You don’t touch that.”
And think what? They’ve done that to bitcoin, [too]. They stated, “Hey, we’ll let bitcoin exist as a store of value. If you get in good with us, we’re going to give you an ETF ticker. We’re going to get our pension funds in there. We’re going to let the price go up high. You’ll be just a little bit better off than everyone else. But you gotta give up this whole medium of exchange [thing].”
We quit actually the very best thing on the planet, a totally free system of genuine commerce for a shop of worth for simply another get abundant fast pump and dump. It’s in fact starting to dawn on everybody: Oh, my goodness. Roger Ver was right.
Corva: I was in fact simply viewing an interview with him on The Bitcoin Takeover. He made some fascinating points that remain in line with what you’re stating.
Youssef: I imply, yeah, I was pissing all over Roger with all the other clowns before, too, however the guy is right. We have actually lost the values. We have actually lost the fundamental base for what we’re doing. And need to they in fact handle to keep bitcoin out of the image as this legal tender and simply keep it as a shop of worth, ultimately we’ll lose whatever.
If it wasn’t for what’s taking place in the Global South, it’s empty. And rather honestly, the Global South has actually moved over primarily to USDT on Tron. The just country still [using] bitcoin mostly for a medium exchange is Nigeria. But the reality is, USDT on Tron is method less expensive. It does not have volatility. It makes a lot more sense. So, how are we going to take on that?
Corva: That’s a great concern. Going back to Nigeria for a minute. NoOnes has employee on the ground who are promoting the platform in the wake of Binance P2P closing down. Do you ever fret about their security? How do you handle the truth that they could quickly be targeted?
Youssef: Number one, I’d attempt to get them out of the nation. And if we can’t do that, then I’d inquire to keep as low of a profile as possible. We also keep something in the bank to represent them lawfully. I do not desire anybody to go to prison for anything I do. I’m not going to have fun with other individuals’s flexibility or security.
But throughout this entire procedure, everybody’s been pooping all over the Nigerian federal government. They’re like, “These people are dumb,” and that’s not handy. There are some extremely wise individuals in the Nigerian federal government that understand precisely what’s going on, however they can’t inform their own individuals precisely what’s going on since their own individuals would not have the ability to manage it or assist them.
Every time I discuss this on Bloomberg or CNN Africa, I state, “The governments are not the problem. There is external pressure being applied to them that we’re not aware of.” And this is constantly the case in each of these circumstances, whether it’s Zimbabwe or Venezuela.
I welcome the federal government to talk anytime. Peer-to-peer is not an issue however the service to in fact remedying Nigeria’s capital control imbalance. If you go to peer-to-peer traders and state, “We need you to help us get more American dollars into the government here to stabilize the price of the Naira, they’re like, ‘Okay, [let’s] do it for Nigeria.’”
[However,] they’re not going to lose cash doing it. They wish to make some cash doing it. But if they have the option in between doing the best thing to assist everybody throughout a long-lasting timeline and making a little bit less revenue, they’ll take that. Believe me, these individuals are not silly. They understand what benefits the nation benefits them, and that need to be leveraged.
Corva: Speaking of individuals not being silly, the group at NoOnes focuses greatly on education. How difficult is informing individuals on the ground?
Youssef: I published a video on my Twitter of among our workshops. There were over a thousand individuals there. That’s just how much cravings there is for this.
Seriously, Education is THE method and #noOnes is definitely exploding now !#Bitcoin to the very first billion, self custody and p2p. pic.twitter.com/lEGaNlXGSE
— Ray Youssef (@raycivkit) March 27, 2024
Everyone requires bullish education. What I imply by bullish education is not the one, 2, 3s, or perhaps how the blockchain works. No one actually cares. It’s how to earn money. People wish to alter their lives.
You can move cash around the globe to utilize arbitrage. You can begin genuine easy and set up a deal to purchase bitcoin low-cost on NoOnes and then take it and offer it on another exchange, a regional exchange, whether you remain in South Africa or Malawi or any place at 10% plus. That’s what some individuals are doing.
One guy I simply spoke to recently was making $2,000 a month — simply purchasing bitcoin inexpensively and offering it for 9-10% of what he purchased it for. He [told me], “This is how I’m paying my way through college.” He invests simply 5 hours a week doing these trades.
There’s another guy in South Africa, and he recognized an issue. Nigerian employees wish to send out cash back home to mom. They can’t do it since they do not have a South African checking account. So he informs them, “Deposit your cash into my South African bank account.” He simply takes that money, purchases bitcoin with it, offers that Bitcoin to somebody in Nigeria on the NoOnes market and states, “Send a bank transfer to this guy’s mother’s bank account.”
He did 2 peer-to-peer deals and turned [South African] Rand into a Nigerian bank transfer, and individuals on the ground are incredibly pleased they didn’t need to do it themselves. They simply put deposit, offered him his mother’s checking account number. He did all the work. He’s banking and making revenue. He began his own remittance passage. He’s essentially Western Union for the extremely particular passage of South Africa to Nigeria.
Corva: These are fish stories. When I consider NoOnes, I consider individuals around the globe accessing to bitcoin, not always ending up being business owners utilizing the platform. It’s fantastic to hear that P2P bitcoin trading allows this.
Youssef: Absolutely. We remain in the middle today of the peer-to-peer transformation. It began with the web. We got all these mobile phones and all these start-ups that interrupted whatever other than financing. Then, we got peer-to-peer electronic money. Now, we’re defending the soul of it as a [medium] of exchange.
Peer-to-peer markets are the last action. That’s what they put Ross Ulbricht in prison for. That’s what they put CZ in cuffs for. They do not desire somebody in fact completing it, finishing the peer-to-peer transformation.
We’re going to the mother and pops, the farmers markets, however if the cash isn’t peer-to-peer, none of it will stick. Once we’ve gone peer-to-peer, what power do they have?
Humanity is formally one once we connect that ribbon around the peer-to-peer transformation.
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