I lately spoke with Ray Youssef, CEO of NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) bitcoin buying and selling platform with quite a few different functionalities, about how NoOnes is empowering its customers, what it is doing in response to the Nigerian authorities’s crackdown on Binance P2P and why P2P marketplaces play a vital function in fulfilling the promise of bitcoin as a medium of alternate.
Youssef and the worldwide workforce at NoOnes are on a mission to finish monetary apartheid and to unite the financially disenfranchised all over the world. Within the course of, they’re taking up the previous monetary guard, pushed by the idea that when folks can commerce freely with each other utilizing bitcoin, the oppressive powers that be will lose their leverage over these residing in creating economies.
A transcript of our dialog, calmly edited for size and readability, follows beneath.
Frank Corva: What’s the major mission of NoOnes?
Ray Youssef: It is the world’s first peer-to-peer distributed nation. I see myself as a chief advocate, not simply CEO — somebody that’s representing the folks. We need to onboard a billion residents within the subsequent six years.
By residents, I imply engaged clients. They are not simply utilizing it as soon as each two weeks. They need to be deeply engaged for this to be victorious. Meaning a billion day by day engaged folks. It is a tremendous quantity when you think about Binance has 120 million customers and about 2-3% of them are most likely month-to-month lively. We’re making an attempt to get 100 occasions that.
Corva: How many individuals are at the moment utilizing it?
Youssef: We have now about 400,000 lively customers, which is fairly superb. My previous firm had like 1 / 4 million lively [users]. The objective right here isn’t just to get empty signups. The objective right here is to make folks lively.
Corva: You’ve talked about how apps like NoOnes and Bitcoin will help finish “monetary apartheid.” May you outline this time period?
Youssef: Monetary apartheid is probably the most evil type of apartheid. It is invisible chains which have mainly saved the overwhelming majority of the world poor for over 100 years, and other people aren’t even conscious [of it]. It manifests in so many alternative methods.
Damaged overregulation [is one form of it]. Africa is probably the most overregulated area of the world. M-Pesa is the highest cellular pockets in Kenya. 98.8% of Kenyans have an M-Pesa pockets. M-Pesa is so massive it’s expanded past Kenya to Ghana, South African and different African international locations, however you continue to cannot ship cash from an M-Pesa pockets in Kenya to an M-Pesa pockets in Ghana or South Africa.
You might be trapped within the financial system the place your passport was issued. You’ll be able to’t entry liquidity in different international locations, and so they cannot entry liquidity in your nation.
The issue will get even worse when you think about commerce between firms. Pan-European commerce is at 69%. In Asia, I feel it’s 59%. Latin America drops right down to 30%. And Africa, formally it is at 13%.
However guess what? The true quantity is lower than 1%. As a result of in that 13%, they depend all these American and Western companies that simply have native names. Intracontinental African commerce is at lower than 1%. If that does not scream monetary apartheid, what does?
Corva: Talking of Africa, let’s focus on what’s occurring in Nigeria. The federal government took two Binance executives hostage. In response, Binance has stopped supporting the Naira and has shut down its P2P buying and selling platform in Nigeria. NoOnes is at the moment enabling Binance P2P merchants to switch their P2P buying and selling profiles from Binance to NoOnes. How is that this going?
Youssef: Merchants are very pleased to have their suggestions imported over. It is crucial. Repute is large on this enterprise, particularly in case you’re an OTC dealer. [So,] we made a particular touchdown web page for all of the peer-to-peer refugees.
They’re very pleased to return over and be capable to discuss to the CEO straight in a Telegram and WhatsApp channel. That goes a great distance.
Binance is being torn aside by the US authorities proper now. Why did they go for this man (Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Binance’s former CEO) so exhausting? Have been they offended he was front-running his personal customers? No. They did not care about that in any respect.
What they actually cared about is that CZ and Binance allowed all of us plebs — all of us peasants on the market — to have monetary entry by peer-to-peer buying and selling. The truth that there’s 120 million folks on the identical inner cash transmission community and that CZ has all these off ramps to native cash everywhere in the world set them off.
Keep in mind the man they got here after earlier than CZ? Ross.
Corva: Ross Ulbricht?
Youssef: Sure, sir. Peer-to-peer is the enemy, and it all the time has been. They’ve had Ross in jail for over 11 years. He simply put up a web site like Amazon or eBay the place anybody may commerce anybody with something.
[Sure,] some folks offered some weed on there. For that, they made up this story about [his involvement in a murder conspiracy]. That is all rubbish. This can be a candy, harmless child. And so they put him in jail for 2 life sentences.
Corva: And Sam Bankman-Fried solely bought 25 years.
Youssef: The one cause Sam Bankman-Fried bought any time in any respect was as a result of some wealthy folks misplaced some cash. That is the one cause that Madoff bought any time in any respect. too. If he was robbing poor folks, nobody would give a rattling. However Ross Ulbricht, man, they hit him with every thing as a result of they may. They wished to ship a message: “Hey, in case you attempt to make international free marketplaces — actual commerce — occur, we’ll destroy you. You don’t contact that.”
And guess what? They’ve completed that to bitcoin, [too]. They mentioned, “Hey, we’ll let bitcoin exist as a retailer of worth. In case you get in good with us, we’re going to provide you an ETF ticker. We’re going to get our pension funds in there. We’re going to let the worth go up excessive. You’ll be just a bit bit higher off than everybody else. However you gotta quit this complete medium of alternate [thing].”
We gave up actually the most effective factor on the planet, a free system of actual commerce for a retailer of worth for simply one other get wealthy fast pump and dump. It’s really starting to daybreak on all of us: Oh, my goodness. Roger Ver was proper.
Corva: I used to be really simply watching an interview with him on The Bitcoin Takeover. He made some attention-grabbing factors which are in keeping with what you’re saying.
Youssef: I imply, yeah, I used to be pissing throughout Roger with all the opposite clowns earlier than, too, however the dude is correct. We have now misplaced the ethos. We have now misplaced the foundational base for what we’re doing. And may they really handle to maintain bitcoin out of the image as this medium of alternate and simply preserve it as a retailer of worth, finally we’ll lose every thing.
If it wasn’t for what’s occurring within the World South, it is empty. And fairly frankly, the World South has moved over principally to USDT on Tron. The one nation nonetheless [using] bitcoin primarily for a medium alternate is Nigeria. However the reality is, USDT on Tron is approach cheaper. It does not have volatility. It makes much more sense. So, how are we going to compete with that?
Corva: That’s a superb query. Going again to Nigeria for a second. NoOnes has workforce members on the bottom who’re selling the platform within the wake of Binance P2P shutting down. Do you ever fear about their security? How do you take care of the truth that they may simply be focused?
Youssef: Primary, I’d attempt to get them in a foreign country. And if we will not do this, then I’d ask them to maintain as low of a profile as potential. We additionally preserve one thing within the financial institution to symbolize them legally. I do not need anybody to go to jail for something I do. I am not going to play with different folks’s freedom or security.
However all through this complete course of, everybody’s been pooping everywhere in the Nigerian authorities. They’re like, “These persons are dumb,” and that is not useful. There are some very good folks within the Nigerian authorities that know precisely what is going on on, however they can not inform their very own folks precisely what is going on on as a result of their very own folks would not be capable to deal with it or assist them.
Each time I discuss this on Bloomberg or CNN Africa, I say, “The governments will not be the issue. There’s exterior stress being utilized to them that we’re not conscious of.” And that is all the time the case in each certainly one of these conditions, whether or not it is Zimbabwe or Venezuela.
I invite the federal government to speak anytime. Peer-to-peer just isn’t an issue however the answer to truly correcting Nigeria’s capital management imbalance. In case you go to peer-to-peer merchants and say, “We’d like you to assist us get extra American {dollars} into the federal government right here to stabilize the worth of the Naira, they’re like, ‘Okay, [let’s] do it for Nigeria.’”
[However,] they are not going to lose cash doing it. They need to make some cash doing it. But when they’ve the selection between doing the fitting factor to assist everybody throughout a long-term timeline and making a little bit bit much less revenue, they’re going to take that. Consider me, these persons are not silly. They know what’s good for the nation is sweet for them, and that needs to be leveraged.
Corva: Talking of individuals not being silly, the workforce at NoOnes focuses closely on schooling. How difficult is educating folks on the bottom?
Youssef: I posted a video on my Twitter of certainly one of our workshops. There have been over a thousand folks there. That is how a lot starvation there’s for this.
Critically, Training is THE approach and #noOnes is completely blowing up now !#Bitcoin to the primary billion, self custody and p2p. pic.twitter.com/lEGaNlXGSE
— Ray Youssef (@raycivkit) March 27, 2024
Everybody wants bullish schooling. What I imply by bullish schooling just isn’t the one, two, threes, and even how the blockchain works. Nobody actually cares. It is the way to earn money. Folks need to change their lives.
You’ll be able to transfer cash all over the world to leverage arbitrage. You can begin actual easy and put up a suggestion to purchase bitcoin low-cost on NoOnes after which take it and promote it on one other alternate, a neighborhood alternate, whether or not you are in South Africa or Malawi or wherever at 10% plus. That is what some persons are doing.
One man I simply talked to final week was making $2,000 a month — simply shopping for bitcoin cheaply and promoting it for 9-10% of what he purchased it for. He [told me], “That is how I’m paying my approach by faculty.” He spends simply 5 hours per week doing these trades.
There’s one other dude in South Africa, and he recognized an issue. Nigerian staff need to ship a reimbursement residence to mama. They can not do it as a result of they do not have a South African checking account. So he tells them, “Deposit your money into my South African checking account.” He simply takes that money, buys bitcoin with it, sells that Bitcoin to somebody in Nigeria on the NoOnes market and says, “Ship a financial institution switch to this man’s mom’s checking account.”
He did two peer-to-peer transactions and turned [South African] Rand right into a Nigerian financial institution switch, and the folks on the bottom are tremendous pleased they did not need to do it themselves. They simply put cash within the financial institution, gave him his mother’s checking account quantity. He did all of the work. He is banking and making revenue. He began his personal remittance hall. He is mainly Western Union for the very particular hall of South Africa to Nigeria.
Corva: These are unbelievable tales. Once I take into consideration NoOnes, I take into consideration folks all over the world getting access to bitcoin, not essentially changing into entrepreneurs utilizing the platform. It’s nice to listen to that P2P bitcoin buying and selling allows this.
Youssef: Completely. We’re within the center proper now of the peer-to-peer revolution. It began with the web. We bought all these cellular gadgets and all these startups that disrupted every thing besides finance. Then, we bought peer-to-peer digital money. Now, we’re combating for the soul of it as a [medium] of alternate.
Peer-to-peer marketplaces are the final step. That is what they put Ross Ulbricht in jail for. That is what they put CZ in cuffs for. They do not need somebody really ending it, finishing the peer-to-peer revolution.
We’ll the mother and pops, the farmers markets, but when the cash is not peer-to-peer, none of it’s going to stick. As soon as we’ve gone peer-to-peer, what energy have they got?
Humanity is formally one as soon as we tie that ribbon across the peer-to-peer revolution.
