I recently spoke with CEO Ray Youssef. No Ones, How NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin trading platform with many other features, is empowering its users and what it’s doing to counter the Nigerian government’s crackdown on Binance P2P , and why P2P marketplaces play an important role. The promise of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.
Yousef and the NoOnes global team are on a mission to end financial apartheid and unite economically disenfranchised people around the world. In the process, they are motivated by the belief that if people can trade freely with each other using Bitcoin, oppressive powers will lose their influence over people living in developing countries. I am taking on the role of financial security guard.
Below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Frank Korba: What is the main mission of NoOnes?
Ray Youssef: It is the world’s first peer-to-peer decentralized nation. I see myself as more than just a CEO, I see myself as the best advocate – someone who represents the people. We believe that in the next six years he wants to accommodate one billion people.
By people, we mean loyal customers. I don’t just use it once every two weeks. For this to be successful, they need to be deeply involved. This means 1 billion people participate every day. This is an amazing number considering that Binance has 120 million users, of which around 2-3% are probably active every month. We are aiming for 100 times that.
Korba: How many people are currently using it?
Youssef: It has around 400,000 active users, which is pretty impressive.At my old company he had about 250,000 active people. [users]. The goal here is not just to get empty signups. The goal here is to get people active.
Korba: You’ve talked about how apps like NoOnes and Bitcoin can help end “financial apartheid.” Could you please define this term?
Youssef: Financial apartheid is the most evil form of apartheid. It’s an invisible chain that has basically kept the majority of the world poor for over 100 years, and people don’t realize it. [of it]. It manifests itself in so many different ways.
Bankrupt overregulation [is one form of it]. Africa is the most overregulated region in the world. M-Pesa is the leading mobile wallet in Kenya. 98.8% of Kenyans have their M-Pesa wallet. M-Pesa is so big that it has expanded beyond Kenya to Ghana, South Africa and other African countries, but you can still transfer money from your M-Pesa wallet in Kenya to your M-Pesa wallet in Ghana or South Africa. You cannot send money.
You are confined to the economic zone in which your passport was issued. You cannot access other countries’ liquidity and other countries cannot access your country’s liquidity.
The problem gets even worse when we consider transactions between companies. Pan-European trade is 69%. I think it’s 59% in Asia. In Latin America, the figure drops to 30%. And in Africa, it’s officially 13%.
But guess what? The real number is less than 1%. Because that 13% includes all American and Western companies that only have local names. Intra-continent trade is less than 1%. If that doesn’t scream financial apartheid, what does?
Korba: Speaking of Africa, let’s talk about what’s happening in Nigeria. The government has taken two Binance executives hostage. In response, Binance stopped supporting Naira and shut down its P2P trading platform in Nigeria. NoOnes is currently allowing a Binance P2P trader to transfer her P2P trading profile from Binance to his NoOnes. How is this going?
Youssef: Traders are very happy to have their feedback imported. That’s very important. Reputation goes a long way in this business, especially if you are an OTC trader. [So,] We have created a special landing page for all peer-to-peer refugees.
They love being able to come here and talk directly to the CEO on Telegram and WhatsApp channels. It’s a long road.
Binance is currently being dismantled by the US government. Why did they target this guy (former Binance CEO Chao Changpeng (CZ)) so hard? Were they mad that he was acting on top of his own users? No, they didn’t care about that at all.
What they really cared about was that CZ and Binance were allowing all of us commoners, all the farmers out there, financial access through peer-to-peer trading. They were inspired by the fact that the same internal remittance network has 120 million people on it, and that CZ provides access to all local money around the world.
Remember the guy they went after before CZ? Loss.
Korba: Ross Ulbricht?
Youssef: I got it. Peer-to-peer is the enemy and always has been. They have kept Ross in prison for over 11 years. He created websites like Amazon and eBay that allowed anyone to trade anything with anyone.
[Sure,] Some people were selling marijuana there.That’s why they made up this story [his involvement in a murder conspiracy]. This is all garbage. He’s a kind and innocent child. And they put him in prison with two life sentences.
Korba: And Sam Bankman Freed only had 25 years to live.
Youssef: The only reason Sam Bankman Freed got any time at all is because some rich people lost money. That’s the only reason Madoff got any time at all. Too. No one would care if he was robbing poor people. But Ross Ulbricht, they attacked him as much as they could. They wanted to send the following message: “If you try to bring about a global free market, real commerce, we’re going to destroy you. You don’t touch it.”
And guess what? They did it for Bitcoin, [too]. They said: “Let’s make Bitcoin exist as a store of value. If you get along with us, we’ll give you an ETF ticker. We’re going to put your pension funds in there. We’ll drive the price up. You… You will be a little better off than others, but you will have to give up all this means of exchange. [thing]”
We literally gave up the best thing in the world, the free system of real commerce for storing value, just to get rich quick. In fact, we’re all starting to realize that. Roger Verr was right.
Korba: I was actually watching an interview with him about the Bitcoin Takeover. He made some interesting points that match what you’re saying.
Youssef: I mean, yeah, I used to be mad at Roger along with all the other clowns, but the guy’s right. We have lost our spirit. We have lost the foundation of what we are doing. And if they actually manage to move Bitcoin away from being this medium of exchange and just keep it as a store of value, then ultimately we will lose everything.
Without what’s happening in the Global South, it’s empty. And frankly, the Global South has mostly migrated to Tron’s USDT.still the only nation [using] Bitcoin is primarily used in Nigeria as a medium exchange. But the truth is that his USDT in Tron is much cheaper. No volatility. It makes more sense. So how do we counter that?
Korba: That’s a good question. Let’s go back to Nigeria for a moment. NoOnes has team members on the ground promoting the platform in the wake of the Binance P2P shutdown. Have you ever worried about their safety? How do you deal with the fact that they can be an easy target?
Youssef: First, I will try to get them out of the country. If that is not possible, I would like to ask you to be as inconspicuous as possible. We also keep something in the bank to legally represent them. No matter what I do, I don’t want anyone to go to jail. I have no intention of infringing on the freedom or safety of others.
But throughout this whole process, everyone was pooping all over the Nigerian government. They say, “These people are stupid,” but that doesn’t help. There are some very smart people in the Nigerian government who know exactly what’s going on, but they don’t know exactly what’s happening to their own people because their own people can’t deal with it or help them. can’t tell.
Every time I talk about this on Bloomberg or CNN Africa, I say this. “Governments are not the problem. There are external pressures on them that we are unaware of.” And this is always true in any situation, whether it’s Zimbabwe or Venezuela.
The government invites you to discuss this at any time. Peer-to-peer is not the problem but the solution to actually correct the imbalance in Nigeria’s capital controls. When you go to a P2P trader and say, “We want you to help us get more American dollars into the government to stabilize the price of the naira,” they say, “Okay. [let’s] Please do it for Nigeria. ”
[However,] They don’t lose money doing it. They want to make money doing it. But if they have a choice between doing the right thing to help everyone on a long-term timeline or taking a little less profit, they’ll take it. Trust me, these guys aren’t stupid. They know that what is good for the country is also good for them, and they should take advantage of that.
Korba: Speaking of people not being stupid, the team at NoOnes is focused on education. How difficult is it to educate people in the field?
Youssef: I posted a video of the workshop on Twitter. There were over a thousand people there. That’s how much hunger there is for this.
Seriously, education is the way; #noOnes It’s absolutely exploding right now!#bitcoin Self-management and P2P for the first billion people. pic.twitter.com/lEGaNlXGSE
— Ray Youssef (@raycivkit) March 27, 2024
Everyone needs bullish education. What I mean by bullish education is not 1, 2, 3, or even how blockchain works. no one really cares. It’s a way to make money. People want to change their lives.
Arbitrage can be used to move funds around the world. You can start really simple and make an offer to buy Bitcoin cheap on NoOnes, then take it and sell it on another exchange, your local exchange, in South Africa or Malawi or anywhere else for 10% plus. Some people are doing that.
One guy I just talked to last week was making $2,000 a month just by buying Bitcoin cheap and selling it for 9-10% of what he bought.he [told me]“This is how I’m paying to go to college.” He spends just five hours a week on these deals.
There was also another guy in South Africa who identified the problem. Nigerian workers want to send money back to their mothers back home. They can’t do that because they don’t have a South African bank account. So he told them, “Please deposit cash into my South African bank account.” He takes that cash, buys Bitcoin with it, sells the Bitcoin on Nowans Market to someone in Nigeria, and says, “Send a bank transfer to this guy’s mother’s bank account.”
He performed two peer-to-peer transactions, [South African] I went to a Nigerian bank transfer and the people on site were very happy because I didn’t have to do the transfer myself. They just deposited the money in the bank and gave him his mother’s bank account number. He did all the work. He makes a profit by running a banking business. He started his own remittance corridor. He’s basically Western Union on a very special corridor from South Africa to Nigeria.
Korba: These are incredible stories. When I think of NoOnes, I think of people all over the world now having access to Bitcoin, but not necessarily using that platform to become entrepreneurs. I’m very happy to hear that P2P Bitcoin trading makes this possible.
Youssef: absolutely. We are currently in the midst of a peer-to-peer revolution. It started with the internet. We’ve got all these mobile devices and startups that are disrupting everything outside of finance. And now you have peer-to-peer electronic cash. Now we are fighting for its soul. [medium] of exchange.
Peer-to-peer marketplaces are the final step. They put Ross Ulbricht in jail for that. That’s why they put CZ on the cuff. They don’t want someone to actually complete it and complete the peer-to-peer revolution.
We go to mom and pops and farmers markets, but if the money isn’t peer-to-peer, none of it sticks. What power do they have once they go peer-to-peer?
Humanity officially becomes one as we tie the ribbon on the peer-to-peer revolution.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/1-billion-bitcoin-p2p-traders-noones-nigeria-global-south
