I recently spoke with Ray Youssef, CEO of NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin trading platform with many other functions, about how NoOnes is empowering its users, and what it is doing in response to the Nigerian government's crackdown on Binance P2P and Why P2P markets play a critical role in fulfilling the promise of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.
Youssef and the global team at NoOnes are on a mission to end financial apartheid and unite the financially disadvantaged around the world. In the process, they are taking on the financial old guard, driven by the belief that when people can trade freely with each other using Bitcoin, the oppressive forces that exist will lose influence over those living in developing economies.
Below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Frank Curva: What is the core mission of NoOnes?
Ray Youssef: It is the world's first peer-to-peer distributed state. I see myself as a major advocate, not just a CEO, but someone who represents people. We want to accommodate a billion citizens in the next six years.
By citizens I mean engaged customers. They don't just use it once every two weeks. They must be deeply involved for this to be victorious. That means a billion people participating every day. It's an amazing number when you consider that Binance has 120 million users and about 2-3% of them are probably active monthly. We try to get that a hundred times over.
Curva: How many people are currently using it?
Yusef: We have about 400,000 active users, which is pretty amazing. My old company had about a quarter million active [users]. The goal here is not just to get empty subscriptions. The goal here is to get people active.
Curva: I've talked about how apps like NoOnes and Bitcoin can help end “financial apartheid.” Can you define this term?
Yusef: Financial apartheid is the worst form of apartheid. It is the invisible chains that have kept the vast majority of the world poor for over a hundred years, and people do not realize it [of it]. It manifests itself in many different ways.
Over-regulation is broken [is one form of it]. Africa is the most regulated region in the world. M-Pesa is the best mobile wallet in Kenya. 98.8% of Kenyans have an M-Pesa wallet. M-Pesa is so big that it has expanded beyond Kenya to Ghana, South Africa and other African countries, but you still cannot send money from an M-Pesa wallet in Kenya to an M-Pesa wallet in Ghana or South Africa.
You are trapped in the economy in which your passport was issued. You can't access liquidity in other countries, and they can't access liquidity in your country.
The problem gets worse when you consider business-to-business trade. European trade is 69% and in Asia I think it is 59%. Latin America drops to 30%. In Africa, the percentage is officially 13%.
But guess what? The real number is less than 1% because in that 13%, they count all these American and Western companies that only have local names. African trade across the continent amounts to less than 1%. If that doesn't scream financial apartheid, what does?
Curva: Speaking of Africa, let's discuss what is happening in Nigeria. The government has taken two Binance executives hostage. In response, Binance stopped supporting the Naira and shut down its P2P trading platform in Nigeria. NoOnes is currently enabling Binance P2P traders to transfer their P2P trading profiles from Binance to NoOnes. how's it going?
Yusef: Traders are very happy to import their comments. It's very important. Reputation is huge in this business, especially if you are an over-the-counter trader. [So,] We have created a special landing page for all peer-to-peer refugees.
They are very happy to come and be able to talk to the CEO directly via Telegram and WhatsApp channel. That goes a long way.
Binance is being torn apart by the US government right now. Why did they choose this guy (Changpeng Zhao (CZ), former CEO of Binance) so powerfully? Were they angry because he was getting ahead of his users? No, they didn't care about that at all.
What they really cared about was that CZ and Binance allowed all of us commoners — all of us peasants out there — to gain financial access through peer-to-peer trading. The fact that there are 120 million people on the same internal money transfer network and that Czechoslovakia has all these ways to access local money around the world has motivated them.
Do you remember the guy they came after before Czechoslovakia? rus.
Curva: Ross Ulbricht?
Yusef: Yes sir. Peer is the enemy, and always has been. They put Ross in prison for over 11 years. He just created a website like Amazon or eBay where anyone can trade anything with anyone.
[Sure,] Some people sold some weed there. That's why they wrote this story about him [his involvement in a murder conspiracy]. This is all rubbish. This is a sweet and innocent child. They put him in prison for two life sentences.
Curva: The Bankman Fried Medal was awarded only 25 years ago.
Yusef: The only reason Sam Bankman Fried got any time at all is because some rich people lost some money. This is the only reason Madoff got any time at all. also. If he robbed the poor, no one would care. But Ross Ulbricht, man, they hit him with everything because they could. They wanted to send a message: “Hey, if you try to create free global markets — real trade — we'll destroy you. Don't touch that.”
And imagine what? They did it with Bitcoin, [too]. They said, “Hey, we'll let Bitcoin exist as a store of value. If you're good to us, we'll give you a ticker ETF. We'll put our retirement funds in there. We'll let the price go up. You'll be a little bit better off than everyone else. But you have to give up a The entire exchange [thing]”.
We've literally given up the best thing in the world, a free real store of value trading system for another quick pump and dump get rich. It's really starting to dawn on us all: Oh my God. Roger Ver was right.
Curva: I was actually watching an interview with him about The Bitcoin Takeover. You bring up some interesting points that go along with what you're saying.
Yusef: I mean, yeah, I was pissing on Roger with all the other clowns before too, but the guy's right. We have lost the soul. We have lost the basic foundation of what we do. If they actually manage to keep Bitcoin out of the picture as a medium of exchange and keep it as a store of value, then everything will eventually be lost.
If it weren't for what's happening in the Global South, it's empty. Quite frankly, the Global South has mostly moved to USDT on Tron. The only nation that remains [using] Bitcoin's first medium exchange is Nigeria. But the truth is that USDT on Tron is much cheaper. It has no fluctuations. It makes much more sense. So, how are we going to compete with that?
Curva: This is a good question. Back to Nigeria for a moment. NoOnes has team members on the ground promoting the platform in the wake of the Binance P2P shutdown. Do you ever worry about their safety? How do you deal with the fact that they can be easily targeted?
Yusef: First, I will try to get them out of the country. If we cannot do that, I will ask them to keep a low profile as much as possible. We also keep something in the bank to represent them legally. I don't want anyone to go to prison for anything I do. I will not play with other people's freedom or safety.
But throughout this whole process, everyone has been shitting all over the Nigerian government. They say, “These people are stupid,” and that's not helpful. There are some very smart people in the Nigerian government who know exactly what is going on, but they cannot tell their people exactly what is going on because their people will not be able to handle it or help them.
Every time I talk about this on Bloomberg or CNN Africa, I say: “The governments are not the problem. There is external pressure on them that we are not aware of.” And that is always the case in every one of these situations, whether it is Zimbabwe or Venezuela. .
I invite the government to speak at any time. The peer-to-peer system is not a problem, but rather the solution to correct the imbalance in capital control in Nigeria. If you go to peer-to-peer traders and say, “We need you to help us bring more US dollars to the government here to stabilize the naira,” they will say, “Okay, [let’s] Do it for Nigeria.”
[However,] They will not lose money doing this. They want to make some money doing it. But if they had a choice between doing the right thing to help everyone over a long-term timeline and making a little less profit, they would accept it. Believe me, these people are not stupid. They know that what is good for the country is good for them, and they should take advantage of that.
Curva: Speaking of people not being stupid, the NoOnes team places a lot of emphasis on education. How difficult is it to educate people on the ground?
Yusef: I posted a video on my Twitter account of one of our workshops. There were more than a thousand people there. That's how hungry I am for this.
Seriously, education is the way to go #noOnes It is absolutely blowing up now!#Bitcoin To the first billion, self-incubation and p2p. pic.twitter.com/lEGaNlXGSE
– Ray Youssef (@raycivkit) March 27, 2024
Everyone needs upward education. What I mean by bottom-up education is not one, two, three, or even how blockchain works. Nobody really cares. It's how you make money. People want to change their lives.
You can move money around the world to benefit from arbitrage. You can start very simply and bid to buy Bitcoin cheap on NoOnes and then take it and sell it on another exchange, a local exchange, whether you are in South Africa or Malawi or wherever for more than 10% interest. This is what some people do.
One guy I just talked to last week was making $2000 a month – just buying Bitcoin cheap and selling it for 9-10% of what he bought it for. he [told me], “This is how I pay my way through college.” He spends just five hours a week doing these trades.
There's another guy in South Africa, and he identified a problem. Nigerian workers want to send money home to Mama. They cannot do this because they do not have a bank account in South Africa. He told them: “Deposit your money in my bank account in South Africa.” He takes that cash, buys Bitcoin with it, sells that Bitcoin to someone in Nigeria on the NoOnes marketplace and says, “Send a wire transfer to this guy's mother's bank account.”
He made two peer-to-peer transactions and then switched [South African] rand in a Nigerian bank transfer, and the people on the ground are very glad they didn't have to do it themselves. They put the money in the bank and gave him his mother's bank account number. He did all the work. He handles banking and makes profits. It has started its own remittance corridor. It's basically Western Union for the very specific route from South Africa to Nigeria.
Curva: These are incredible stories. When I think of NoOnes, I think of people around the world who have access to Bitcoin, and don't necessarily become entrepreneurs using the platform. It's great to hear that P2P Bitcoin trading allows for this.
Yusef: definitely. We are now in the middle of a peer-to-peer revolution. It started with the Internet. We have all these mobile devices and all these startups that have disrupted everything except finance. Then we got peer-to-peer electronic money. Now, we're fighting for her soul as… [medium] From exchange.
Peer-to-peer markets are the last step. That's why they put Ross Ulbricht in prison. This is what they put Czechoslovakia in handcuffs for. They don't want someone to actually finish it and complete the peer-to-peer revolution.
We'll go to farmers markets, but if the money isn't peer-to-peer, none of it will last. Once we go peer-to-peer, what power do they have?
Humanity is officially one once this ribbon is tied around the peer-to-peer revolution.
