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Since its founding two years in the past, NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, has achieved rather a lot in a brief house of time. As a visionary entrepreneur, Ray Youssef, NoOnes CEO, helps paved the way within the evolving world of crypto. Utilizing Bitcoin as a device, Youssef and his crew consider it’ll carry empowerment to the World South.
On this unique interview, Rebecca Campbell, crypto content material editor at CoinJournal, spoke with Ray Youssef, co-founder and CEO at NoOnes, to debate NoOnes imaginative and prescient and the way it and Bitcoin are empowering the World South. Youssef dives into the challenges they face, a monetary apartheid in Africa, political pressures from the West, the limitless alternatives for the World South, and the way the connection between crypto and folks is evolving.
Rebecca Campbell (RC): Are you able to inform me about NoOnes and the place the title got here from?
Ray Youssef (RY): NoOnes is a brilliant app for the World South. We began as a peer-to-peer crypto market, however we at all times deliberate on being far more than that. In lower than two years we’ve added a spot trade and a digital VISA card, and we’re about to launch our NoOnes reward card. We’re additionally a messenger app and you’ll even top-up your cell phone. NoOnes is constructed for the folks of the World South, so we don’t have the issues of a US-based enterprise making an attempt to serve folks within the World South.
The way in which NoOnes bought its title is a shaggy dog story. When NoOnes was only a dream, a sequence of brainstorming periods with the fellows who helped get it began, I’d been having these random ideas about our household canine who had died about 15 years earlier than. Her title was Heidie, however my mom gave her a nickname – Noons.
I liked that canine and for some motive, she was continually in my ideas round that point, so someday as a joke I stated, “We should always name the corporate Noons.” I wrote it down on a chunk of paper and noticed that it learn like NoOnes, and I believed it was excellent. It captures the reality about what we needed to do with a decentralized market. Your cash is NoOnes enterprise. Your knowledge is NoOnes enterprise. Your online business is NoOnes enterprise.
RC: What are your imaginative and prescient and targets with NoOnes?
RY: Ever since I noticed the ability of crypto and peer-to-peer, my imaginative and prescient and targets haven’t modified. There are lots of people in crypto who wish to get wealthy, however that’s by no means actually motivated me. I noticed crypto as a leveler, an equalizer. And I noticed the way it might make a distinction to folks continually left behind by the monetary system as a result of their cash is the unsuitable shade or their passport is the unsuitable sort.
As quickly as I noticed the potential of crypto and peer-to-peer working collectively to create this eco-system that permits any type of cash to grow to be one other type of cash, I knew it was a mechanism that would finish monetary apartheid. I name it monetary apartheid as a result of that’s what the worldwide monetary system is – it discriminates towards folks due to who they’re and the place they arrive from. I’ve identified that for a very long time. With NoOnes, we will change that as a result of we’re based mostly within the World South and tailor our merchandise to go well with the individuals who want them most.
My imaginative and prescient is to see lots of of cities like Dubai all around the World South, with folks buying and selling freely, constructing wealth and making their lives and their household’s lives higher.
RC: Are you able to speak in regards to the function NoOnes and Bitcoin will play in empowering the World South?
RY: Initially, we’re based mostly right here. Meaning we’ve boots on the bottom and might speak to the individuals who use our market to purchase crypto, commerce reward playing cards, make funds, remittances, no matter. Our merchandise aren’t based mostly on a Western mannequin after which pressured on folks as a result of they haven’t any different possibility.
Take KYC, for instance. Once I was within the US, we regularly needed to file a suspicious exercise report and lock a World South buyer’s funds when, for no matter motive, they had been flagged on the system. Then we needed to wait till the American regulators bought again to us to say, “Okay, you may let these guys go.” Typically, we needed to wait years till we might launch a buyer’s funds.
In the meantime, these folks, who did nothing unsuitable, needed to wait till the regulator stated they might entry their very own cash. Within the meantime, they needed to discover cash from elsewhere to cowl what the regulators locked away. Even the banks can’t try this, however Uncle Sam can. It was loopy. Why ought to we put our prospects via that form of ache?
The US nonetheless controls Africa to such an extent that it’s tough for nations to commerce with one another. That’s a part of the monetary apartheid I discuss. Look what occurred lately with Binance. A brand new CEO is available in and the very first thing they do is disable Pan-African commerce on Binance peer-to-peer. Kenyans can solely commerce with Kenyans and Ghanaians can solely commerce with Ghanaians.
That’s the precise coverage the US has been utilizing to maintain Africa and the remainder of the World South poor. We’re altering that. I spend a number of my time advocating for Pan-African commerce. It’s an important a part of making the World South rich. Think about if some man working a enterprise in New York couldn’t commerce with a enterprise in New Jersey. Would any American put up with that? Why ought to Africans?
RC: What are the challenges and alternatives you face in attaining this for Bitcoin to achieve its full potential within the World South?
RY: There are many challenges dealing with us, however the largest one is coping with the political stress from the West. Anybody who goes towards the West and their central bankers goes to be resisted. The governments and elites who run the worldwide monetary system are sturdy as a result of they’ve a sequence of sliders, a bunch of levers they will push and pull to manage the whole lot.
They will pull a method and say, “Oh, Nigeria, you haven’t been listening to us, so we’re going to take your slider all the best way all the way down to zero.” They will transfer these levers at any time, so that they have large energy, they usually can management the economies of the world. They will punish or reward a market, even entire economies, and we have to offset this.
Crypto and peer-to-peer are the offsets, and that’s why the West has such an issue with crypto. It’s why they put individuals who don’t comply with their mannequin in jail.
The alternatives within the World South are limitless. Africa has the fastest-growing inhabitants of any continent. It has 1.5 billion folks, and the subsequent 25 years will add nearly one other billion. There’s a youth unemployment downside proper now, however I see that as a chance. I’ve met so many younger Africans who’re savvy and dynamic they usually all wish to succeed. I’ve seen lots of them use our market to become profitable, to start out companies, and to vary their lives.
India additionally has superb alternatives, as does Latin America. There are such a lot of alternatives in all of those locations for folks to create companies by piggybacking on our platform – that’s one of many best successes of NoOnes, I believe. We will’t have success except we assist others have success, and the ethics of that’s largely lacking within the company world at this time.
Which corporations are giving again 50% of their earnings to the individuals who use their merchandise? We’re doing that at NoOnes. Now we have bonuses, incentives, and a Associate Program that rewards the individuals who assist us develop as a result of we wish folks to assist us unfold the phrase in regards to the energy of crypto and peer-to-peer. We want the World South to know that it doesn’t should accept a Western mannequin that doesn’t go well with its wants.
If we add up all of these issues – dynamic, savvy younger people who find themselves hardworking and able to grasp alternatives, a common container for cash that can be a retailer of wealth, and the NoOnes market that provides the World South entry to finance and free commerce – we’ll attain the complete potential of the World South, and I believe it may possibly occur shortly. Most individuals within the West will probably be astonished by it.
RC: How is NoOnes totally different from what you probably did at Paxful?
RY: Paxful had a serious drawback – it was based mostly within the US. I’ve already talked about KYC and all the issues we encountered making an attempt to assist folks within the World South as a US firm. You may’t do it – and it’s getting worse. Take a look at what occurred to Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, [the former CEO of Binance]. He went to jail. Take a look at what occurred to Pavel Durov, the Telegram CEO – he went to jail the minute his airplane landed in France.
I had the identical imaginative and prescient at Paxful that I’ve now, and possibly it took me too lengthy to understand that I couldn’t obtain my mission of working a US firm. However now the shackles are off. Nothing is holding us again now that we’re based mostly within the World South.
I discovered years in the past that my precedence needs to be to serve my customers, my prospects. They will fireplace the CEO. I discovered that serving to my mother and father run a newsstand on Columbus Circle in New York Metropolis once I was a child.
Within the US, the primary precedence for many corporations is to serve the federal government, then, in the event that they’re comfortable, you may assist your prospects. That’s not proper. And I received’t try this. We noticed what occurred with Binance. They gave up their consumer knowledge to the [Israeli Defense Forces] IDF and lots of of individuals misplaced tens of millions of {dollars} – and a few of them had been killed. Examine the NoOnes privateness coverage to the Binance privateness coverage. We received’t hand over our consumer knowledge. I couldn’t say that once I was CEO of Paxful.
RC: How do you see NoOnes evolving within the subsequent 5-10 years?
RY: NoOnes goes to get larger, that’s for certain. Typically I’ve to remind myself that we didn’t exist two years in the past as a result of we’ve come to this point in such a short while, however that is solely the beginning. Folks would possibly consider us as a crypto peer-to-peer market, however we’re at all times including new merchandise, making present ones higher, and we take heed to our customers so we may give them what they want.
I discuss our enterprise as an ecosystem as a result of that’s the easiest way to explain how we’re evolving. We created a market for crypto and reward playing cards, we added a spot trade and different merchandise, and we feed earnings again into that ecosystem. Individuals are constructing their companies on prime of our platform.
Expats working abroad ship cash dwelling and notice our platform is a greater, sooner, and cheaper approach of doing it than utilizing a conventional cash changer – so they begin doing it for his or her mates and create a facet hustle. Somebody must make a fee out of the country, however they don’t have a checking account, so that they use our platform – they see how easy it’s, so they begin a enterprise doing the identical for different folks. And all of it feeds again into the ecosystem.
Think about all these companies taking the place of the standard banks and cash changers – the wealth stays within the World South as an alternative of lining the pockets of all of the executives working for banks and monetary establishments within the West. That’s a part of the rationale they don’t like what we do.
Think about when all of the folks within the World South notice how simple it’s to make these adjustments. How simple it’s to cease the drain on the sources of the World South – it’s been taking place for hundreds of years and it has to cease, and it’ll. In 5 years, possibly much less, NoOnes will probably be main that drive and the World South will probably be on the best way to turning into a superpower.
RC: How do you see the connection between crypto and the broader inhabitants evolving?
RY: That’s an incredible query as a result of it’s the entrance line within the battle happening in the intervening time. Earlier than I understood crypto I believed it was simply “Web humorous cash.” Most individuals nonetheless assume that approach now as a result of they don’t perceive it. I’m undecided governments perceive it that properly, however they realize it’s a menace to the established order. That’s why they tried to cease it, and that’s why they’re making an attempt to manage it now.
The true energy on this planet is the one which controls the cash system. The folks in energy have levers they use to maintain us in our place, and the style during which we reverse engineer it have to be defined very clearly and logically for folks if we’re to reach getting them to assist us repair the present state of humanity.
In easy phrases, I’m speaking a few forex warfare, and once I say forex I imply something that could be a retailer of worth and could be traded. Finally, the folks will probably be received over to crypto as a result of its energy can’t be denied – even governments acknowledge this now. Some nations banned it, then they realized its utility, and now they’re making an attempt to manage it. Crypto isn’t going away.
The true query is whether or not the essence of it will get destroyed within the means of being accepted by the broader inhabitants. Crypto was designed to be trustless and permissionless – which means we don’t should belief some authorities or company to place confidence in its worth.
RC: What’s NoOnes specializing in in the intervening time?
RY: Our focus is on our three core values – everybody eats, bullish schooling, and revolutionary transparency.
I’ve already talked about giving again 50% of our earnings and our associate program, and that’s a part of what we imply by “everybody eats.” I don’t wish to get wealthy on the expense of the individuals who use our merchandise. Some folks snort at me once I say I’m on a mission, however I’ve been saying it for greater than a decade as a result of it’s true. We received’t be comfortable if we’re profitable and others round us aren’t, in order that’s why everybody eats is essential.
One other precept is revolutionary transparency. A lot of companies discuss being clear, however most of them don’t comply with via. Because of this we get issues like we noticed with FTX. NoOnes is totally different. Anybody who desires to see the enterprise knowledge I see about NoOnes can see it by wanting on the CEO Dashboard on our app.
Proper now, our largest focus is on schooling. I’ve talked in regards to the alternatives within the World South, however these alternatives received’t imply something if folks don’t find out about them and grow to be educated about how crypto may help them resolve issues. We created the NoOnes Academy so folks can study not solely the way to commerce profitably, but additionally how they will do it safely.
Some folks would possibly wish to make a fee or ship cash dwelling, however they’re fearful of crypto as a result of they’ve heard nasty tales within the media. We wish to educate them so that they perceive how simple it really works and the way a lot utility it has. Some folks would possibly simply use it in a small approach – serving to them pay for one thing as a result of they don’t have a VISA card or a checking account. Others could be expert and savvy, however they’re unemployed they usually’re trying to earn cash to pay the payments or to start out a enterprise – they may discover ways to commerce reward playing cards or crypto via the NoOnes Academy.
If sufficient folks grow to be educated about how our tremendous app works, the World South will change dramatically.
RC: What are your plans for NoOnes by way of progress and growth?
RY: I’ve already talked about Dubai, but it surely’s an incredible instance of the way forward for the World South. Lots of people assume Dubai has had huge progress due to oil, however that’s simply not true. Sheikh Mohammed made commerce simple and the atmosphere business-friendly, and fairly quickly the cash flowed into Dubai like a river. The cash that got here in was then fed again into growth and we will see the outcome at this time.
My imaginative and prescient is to see cities like Dubai throughout the World South, with NoOnes main the best way. We’ll present the infrastructure, the schooling and the alternatives, and which means being on the bottom, listening to folks so we may give them what they should assist them develop. We’ve achieved it with our peer-to-peer market, our spot trade, a digital VISA card, and reward playing cards – and new merchandise are coming.
We’re taking a look at a peer-review credit score rating so customers will get a ranking that can be utilized to supply financing for start-ups and enterprise homeowners. We wish to fine-tune our messaging operate as a result of that’s an effective way to draw folks we will educate on the advantages of crypto.
We want extra folks to assist us develop, so we’ll be hiring folks on the bottom wherever we do enterprise. Already our customers are serving to us by making content material to assist educate their fellow residents. Our progress and growth at all times revolve round work. Free commerce permits the cash to circulate and that places folks to work to allow them to create their wealth. I actually consider in common wealth, however that solely occurs when the roadblocks to progress are eliminated. To try this we should have the folks behind us, and that’s why schooling is so essential.
Our purpose was for NoOnes to have a billion customers inside seven years, and if we do that we are going to carry the World South nearer to the wealth it’s been denied for therefore lengthy.