Recently, I spoke to Ray Youssef CEO of NoOnesNoOnes, an open source bitcoin exchange platform, empowers its users through a variety of other features. what it’s doing In response to Nigeria’s government crackdown on Binance P2P, and the importance of P2P markets in fulfilling bitcoin’s promise as an exchange medium.
Youssef is on a global mission with NoOnes to stop the use of plastic bags. financial Apartheid, and unite those who are financially disenfranchised throughout the world. As they do so, they are taking on old ways. financial Guard is driven by the conviction that, when people are able to trade freely using bitcoins, oppressive powers will no longer have any leverage on those who live in developing economies.
Below is a transcript of our discussion, which has been lightly edited to improve length and clarity.
Frank Corva What is NoOnes’ primary mission?
Ray Youssef This is the first peer-topeer distributed country in history. I see myself as a chief advocate, not just CEO — someone that is representing the people. We are aiming to bring a billion people on board. next The six-year period is a time frame for evaluating the effectiveness of a program.
When I say citizens, what do I really mean? Engaged customers. The customers are not using the app just once a week. For this to work, they have to be engaged. This means that a billion people are actively engaged every day. Binance is a 120-million user platform, and only about 2-3% of those users are active monthly. Our goal is to reach a 100-fold increase.
Corva: What is the current usage?
Youssef: It is amazing to see that we have about 400,000 users. I used to work for a company that had a quarter of a million users. [users]. This is not about simply getting empty registrations. It is important to encourage people to be active.
Corva: NoOnes, Bitcoin and other apps can be used to help fight the end of poverty. “financial apartheid.” What is this word?
Youssef: Apartheid in the form of financial discrimination is by far the worst. Invisible chains have kept most of the world in poverty for more than a century, but people don’t know it. [of it]. There are so many manifestations.
Broken overregulation [is one form of it]. Africa is one of the overregulated regions in the world. M-Pesa, Kenya’s top mobile wallet is M. M-Pesa has been adopted by 98.8% Kenyans. M-Pesa’s popularity has spread beyond Kenya, to Ghana, South Africa, and many other African countries. But you cannot send money directly from your M-Pesa Kenya wallet to a M-Pesa Ghana wallet or South Africa wallet.
Your passport is tied to the country’s economy. It’s impossible to get liquidity from other countries and vice versa.
Even worse, when we consider the trade between firms. Pan-European Trade is at 69%. Asia is at 59%, according to my memory. Latin America falls to 30%. Africa is officially at 13%.
Guess what? It’s less than 1%. In that 13 percent, all the American and Western companies with local names are included. Intracontinental African trading is below 1%. This is a shocking statistic. financial Apartheid is what?
Corva: Talking about Africa, lets’s take a look at what is happening in Nigeria. The government has taken two Binance executives as hostages. Binance shut down their P2P trading platforms in Nigeria and stopped supporting Naira. NoOnes allows Binance traders who use P2P to move their profiles to NoOnes. How’s it going?
Youssef: Investors love the fact that their comments are imported. It is important. Reputation in the OTC trading business is very important. [So,] We created a landing page just for peer-to-peer refugee.
It’s a great feeling to be able talk directly to the CEO in Telegram or WhatsApp. It goes a long ways.
Binance has been ripped apart by the US Government. What made them go after this guy so much (Changpeng Zhao, CZ)? Was it because they were angry that he had a head start on his competitors? own users? No. The people didn’t seem to care.
What they really cared about is that CZ and Binance allowed all of us plebs — all of us peasants out there — to have financial Peer-to-peer trade allows access. They were astonished to learn that CZ had dozens of off-ramps for local currency in all parts of the world and 120 million people shared the same money network.
Remember who they went after before CZ. Ross.
Corva: Ross Ulbricht?
Youssef: Yes, sir. It has always been the case that peer-to-peer communication is dangerous. Ross is in jail since over 11 years. He set up a site like Amazon and eBay, where anybody could exchange anything with anyone.
[Sure,] There were some marijuana sellers. Then they invented this whole story. [his involvement in a murder conspiracy]. All of this is garbage. Here is an innocent, sweet child. They put him behind bars for a total of two lives.
Corva: Sam Bankman Fried only received 25 years.
Youssef: Sam Bankman Fried only got his time due to the fact that some wealthy people were unable to pay their bills. Madoff only got time for this reason. too. Nobody would care if he was robbing people. They hit Ross Ulbricht with all they had because it was possible. The message they wanted to convey was: “Hey, if you try to make global free marketplaces — real commerce — happen, we’re going to destroy you. You don’t touch that.”
Guess what? The same thing has happened to Bitcoin. [too]. The said: “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].”
It was the greatest thing we could have done. We traded a real free commerce system for an empty store to make quick money. We’re all starting to realize: Oh my goodness. Roger Ver is right.
Corva: He was interviewed on The Bitcoin Takeover. You’re right, he brought up some very interesting points.
Youssef: The dude has it right. We’ve lost our ethos. Our foundation has been lost. If they manage to remove bitcoin from the equation as an exchange medium and keep it only as a storage of value then we will lose everything.
It would be empty if it weren’t for the Global South. The Global South, quite honestly, has shifted to USDT for Tron. Only one nation remains. [using] Nigeria is the primary country that uses bitcoin as a medium of exchange. USDT for Tron, however, is much cheaper. It has no volatility. This makes more sense. What are our options to counter that?
Corva: It’s an excellent question. Let’s go back to Nigeria. NoOnes is promoting its platform on the ground in response to Binance P2P closing down. Do you worry about the safety of your users? Do you ever worry about their safety?
Youssef: First, I would try to remove them from the country. We’d try to get them out of the country, but if that’s not possible I would tell them to maintain a low-profile. Also, we keep some money in the bank so that they can be represented legally. It’s not my intention for anyone to be in jail. I won’t play around with the safety or freedom of others.
But through this entire process everyone has been pissing all over the Nigerian Government. They’re like, “These people are dumb,” This is not helpful. The Nigerian government has some smart people who know what is going on but can’t say anything. own People need to know what is going on. own The people would not be able handle the situation or assist them.
Each time I mention this topic on CNN Africa or Bloomberg Africa, I use the phrase “The governments are not the problem. There is external pressure being applied to them that we’re not aware of.” It’s the same in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
The government is welcome to contact me at any time. The solution for Nigeria’s imbalance in capital controls is peer-to-peer. You can tell peer-to-peer brokers that you want to correct the capital control imbalance in Nigeria. “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,] The goal is to make money. The goal is to earn some cash. They will choose to do the right thing and help all people over the long term, even if it means making less money. These people aren’t stupid. The people are aware of what they can do to help the country and themselves.
Corva: NoOnes is a team that focuses on education, because people are not stupid. What is the challenge of educating people in real life?
Youssef: A video from one of our workshop was posted on Twitter. Over a 1000 people were there. This is how hungry people are for it.
Education IS the answer #noOnes It’s absolutely blowing now!#Bitcoin To the first billion dollars, self-custody and peer to peer. pic.twitter.com/lEGaNlXGSE
— Ray Youssef (@raycivkit) March 27, 2024
Everyone needs bullish education. Bullish education does not mean that I know the number 1, 2, 3, or how blockchains work. Nobody cares. Making money is what matters. Many people want to make a change in their life.
Leverage arbitrage allows you to move money anywhere in the world. Start simple by putting up an offer on NoOnes to purchase bitcoin at a low price and then sell it locally on another exchange. Some people do this.
One guy I just talked to last week was making $2,000 a month — just buying bitcoin cheaply and selling it for 9-10% of what he bought it for. He [told me], “This is how I’m paying my way through college.” This trade takes him just five minutes a day.
A second guy is in South Africa and has identified a similar problem. Nigerian workers are eager to send some money to their mama. The workers can’t send money home because they do not have South African bank accounts. He tells them to do so. “Deposit your cash into my South African bank account.” NoOnes is a marketplace where you can buy bitcoins, and then sell them to people in Nigeria. “Send a bank transfer to this guy’s mother’s bank account.”
Two peer-topeer transactions turned him into a millionaire [South African] The people in Nigeria are thrilled that they don’t need to transfer money themselves. The people on the ground are very happy that they didn’t have to do it themselves. They simply put money into the bank and gave him his mother’s bank account. He took care of everything. work. He makes money by banking. He started his own remittance corridor. Western Union is what he’s essentially doing for this very particular corridor from South Africa into Nigeria.
Corva: These are unbelievable stories. NoOnes has helped people all over the globe gain access to bitcoin. I don’t necessarily think of them as entrepreneurs, but rather, just ordinary individuals. I’m glad to know that P2P Bitcoin trading allows for this.
Youssef: Absolutely. Right now, we are at the forefront of the peer to peer revolution. The internet was the beginning. Then came all the mobile devices, and then all those startups who disrupted all but finance. Next, came peer-topeer electronic money. Now we are fighting to save the very soul of this technology. [medium] The exchange of goods and services.
The last step is peer-to-peer markets. It’s for this they sent Ross Ulbricht to jail. CZ is in handcuffs due to this. It’s because they don’t want to see someone finish the revolution, completing peer-to-peer.
If the money doesn’t go peer-to-peer then none of it is going to stick. What power will they have once we go peer-to-peer?
The peer-topeer revolution has officially united humanity.
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com