The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Will Create Global Wealth For All | Ray Youssef, CEO Of Paxful

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, believes that Bitcoin can deliver an abundance of wealth to humanity. He is watching it happen in real time in Africa, South American and beyond, where Bitcoin is saving the lives of millions on a daily basis. If you believe that Bitcoin is more than just a trade or investment, this episode is for you. -- Arculus: Secure your assets, secure your future, with Arculus. Arculus is the crypto cold storage wallet that combines the world’s strongest security protocols with an easy-to-manage app. Store, swap, and send your crypto all with a simple tap of your Arculus Key™ card.  Order the safer, simpler, smarter crypto cold storage solution today at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/arculus -- Bullish: Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with confidence across variable market conditions, while secure in a regulated environment that's backed by multibillion-dollar liquidity contributions from the Bullish treasury. Follow @Bullish on twitter or visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/bullish to learn more. Not investment advice. Digital assets and cryptocurrencies are high risk products. Consult your professional advisor before dealing in them. Bullish’s services are available in select locations only and not to U.S persons. Visit bullish.com for important information and risk warnings. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This episode is sponsored by Arculus and Bullish. Stay tuned for more information on both of them later in this episode. What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast, where twice every week I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, music, trading, art, sports, basically anyone with a good story to tell. Now, today's guest, Ray Youssef, has been here before, and this is the second time, and I can't believe it has taken me so long to get him back on the show. He is the CEO of Paxful, one of the few companies out there that's actually living Bitcoin out to its true purpose as peer-to-peer

cash for people all over the world. They have reached an astounding 6 million users or more. Maybe he'll tell me that it's more than billions of dollars transacted. And he's really the man that's on the front line working on Bitcoin adoption all over the world. Ray, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you for having me, bro. It's a pleasure to be on here, especially with you, bro. You're one of my best, one of my favorites. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate that. You know that the sentiment is very much mutual. So for those who maybe didn't hear our first conversation or haven't caught up, can you give them the very quick and dirty explanation of what Paxful is?

Now, Paxful is a lot of things to a lot of people. But if you look at it technically, it's just a wallet, a listing service like Craigslist, and an escrow service. And those three things combined basically allow anyone to exchange any form of money with any other form of money with Bitcoin used as a kind of clearing layer in between. So it almost acts like a universal translator for money. Now, when you go to the website, you'll see buy Bitcoin instantly because anyone can buy Bitcoin with a gift card, a bank transfer if they have a bank account, an online wallet if they're in Kenya with M-Pay.

Any form of money, 455 payment methods can be used to buy Bitcoin, and those same methods can be used to sell Bitcoin. So, for example, someone in Nigeria can have someone pay them with a gift card code. They can take that gift card code and they can sell it to someone in China. You can get Bitcoin in exchange and then they've acquired their first Bitcoin. Let's say they want to hold on to some of that Bitcoin and the rest, they want to turn into a local bank transfer in Nigeria. They can sell it to someone in Nigeria and they'll pay them for it with a local Nigerian bank transfer. So what they've actually done is transported money, say from the United States to Nigeria, without having to do a

wire. And Bitcoin is the method that made that happen. Now, if you look at it, you know, beyond that just simple spectrum, it can be used for anything. It can be used for remittance, it can be used for payments. And every time someone comes to our site, I take the chance to actually talk to them because I want to know, why did you come here? Why did you type Bitcoin into that search engine? What is the problem you're trying to solve? And the vast majority of people are not there because they want to speculate in Bitcoin. There are a lot of people, say, for example, in Africa that want to preserve their wealth because inflation is running rampant. For example, in Nigeria, in the 80s, 561 naira, their local currency, would get you $1,000. Now it'll get you $1.

But beyond just wealth preservation, payments, remittance, commerce, these are all real problems that people have. And an open-ended peer-to-peer marketplace solves those problems. So we built this thing and it was the people of Africa, particularly Western Africa, that took it and kind of hacked it to solve every single problem that they had. And that's what really gave us the insight into what Bitcoin's killer app really is, as a kind of liquid clearing layer for every form of money. I've seen you allude to the fact that the youth of Nigeria have built an entire effectively banking system outside of the legacy system using Bitcoin with Paxful as a part of that.

And that's quite literally a story I've never seen told in the media. How are we missing this? We talk about microstrategy and adoption of institutions, but we never talk about Bitcoin actually being used, or at least we don't see it. It's crazy to me that everyone is not just jumping all over this. I have been repeating this message for the past six years, and you're one of the few people that's like, hey, look what these guys are doing. They have literally been doing this for years and yelling. And now finally, people are starting to take notice slowly. But let's zoom into the situation here, right? So what's going on in Nigeria? Everyone wants to know.

The guys at Square and Cash App are like, what's going on over there? Jack Dorsey's in this now. He sees the potential. So everyone talks about the unbanked, right. There's 1.7 million unbanked people in the world, but the truth is it's more around 4 billion or even 6 billion. A lot of our Nigerian users actually have bank accounts. They have several bank accounts in Nigeria, but if they ever want to do a cross-border payment, even to a country in Africa, it's literally a nightmare. There's 2,000 payment networks in Africa, only like 2-3% of them actually talk to each other. So they can't even move money pan-African, let alone sending money out of the country, especially into Europe and America and the golden circle of Western finance.

So in that sense, even if they have 10 bank accounts in Nigeria, they're still unbanked outside of there. And that harkens back to the problem of financial apartheid. So what the youth of Nigeria have done is they've managed to acquire Bitcoin and they've literally used it via OTC peer-to-peer transactions to solve every cross-border problem that they have. Payments, remittance, especially remittance. What they've done with remittance is absolutely astounding. Consider that in September, I mean, January 2020, remittances in Nigeria were around like $2.5 billion. By September of that same year, it fell to $55 million.

It's a 98% decrease. And that's what made the government of Nigeria say, hey, what's going on here? All this money was coming in, all these US dollars are coming in, and now it stopped. Was it just COVID? No, it wasn't just COVID. It was all the Nigerian youth figuring out, hey, instead of sending money with Western Union or whatever, send it over here in Bitcoin, and we can turn it into Naira at a profit. And that's what they did. And they did it with such acumen and such ferocity that they completely terraformed the financial system over there. Everyone should look at the example of Nigeria. It is the leading country in the world for cryptocurrency adoption. And honestly,

people are talking about 30 million Nigerians or 30% of Nigerians using crypto. That number is wrong. Nigeria is over 200 million people. It's not 30% of the people that are using Bitcoin. I would say it's around 1%. It's just the nature and the quality and the business acumen and the hunger of that 1% is astounding. And they drive so much business. They have literally gotten Bitcoin into every other Western African country. And they are pushing Bitcoin, the entire narrative, throughout all of Africa. And what does that mean for the actual governments, right?

You said all of a sudden, obviously, these governments want U.S. dollars, frankly, coming in, right? And now they've seen that stop. They've sort of seen that floodgate closed. The youth are doing this outside of the system. Wouldn't the governments themselves want a piece of this in some way, shape, or form? Yeah, absolutely, they do. In fact, we went over there and we met with the government. We met with the vice president's people. We met with the SEC of Nigeria. We met with the youth of ministry and education. We had a very open-ended conversation with them. Yes, they do want to control things.

Yes, they do want to tax things. But the honest truth is they're still trying to understand exactly what's happening. When you consider that lawmakers in the United States are like three years behind the curve, lawmakers, everyone else, are another three years behind the curve. Lawmakers, everyone else are another three years behind the curve. And things in Nigeria are moving faster than anywhere else in the world. So they're still trying to grasp the situation. What I found, and this is honestly the biggest open secret in the world, the reason why some people are poor and some people are rich, because we're living in a state of financial apartheid, right? And that system

exists because the Western banking system can tell countries, hey, your money is not as good as our money. You can only bring a limited amount of your money into our markets, else we're going to destroy the value of your exchange rate. And that's why all these countries, whether it's Nigeria, Malaysia, whatever, will try to hold on to hard money, meaning dollars and euros as much as possible, because it props up the value of their exchange rate. And if they don't, they take a massive hit and then you get inflation. And that's why they don't want money leaving. The question is, is their money really leaving the country? It's not, because what happens is when Bitcoin comes in, it actually creates more churn of local money in the economy,

which is amazing. Now, when it comes to remittance, that's another story. Because, yes, Western Union is putting in billions of dollars into economies. But how much of those billions of dollars in USD or euros is the actual government really getting? Almost none. They tax a very small portion of it. Most of it is just maintained locally with the floats between

Western Union and MoneyGram, or what have you. So we've been having dialogues with them, and we're trying to make them see the light here that if you jump on this bandwagon, if you get on this train, you will not only make your people richer, but you will also get richer and you will have more control. It's a winning argument for everyone. Naturally, these things take time. Right. One of the few places that we've actually seen it on both the population and government level, of course, is El Salvador. But you talk about the idea of financial apartheid. And every day, it seems there's another criticism from the World Bank, IMF, another downgrade of El Salvador's debt. Obviously, the powers that want to obviously offer El Salvador a predatory loan, and they're now unable to because of Bitcoin. We see them going

after that. So you can see what you're talking about in real time, how this is a threat to those larger systems. What are your thoughts on how that's slowly playing out now in El Salvador? It's a really interesting example, right? Like El Salvador, this little country, the savior, they use the U.S. dollar, right? And you would think, hmm, they use the U.S. dollar. Do they really have a need for Bitcoin? They do. There's a lot of things they can

use it for, but because they have the US dollar, things like payments and commerce, it doesn't really offer that much more value there. But because the US dollar, it's easier for them to do it because their currency can't be attacked, right? That's the thing that everyone misses. The reason these central bankers have so much power is that they are holding a gun to the head of every nation in the world that has its own currency. If you mess with us, if you try to print up your own money and put your youth to work building roads, wells, and schools, building up your country, you can't do that. You have to borrow our money at interest. That is the kernel of everything that is the biggest problem in the world which is the reason you've come to a country like egypt or

jordan or any of these countries that use their own currency and you make the same argument they're like oh hold on a second we don't want you know our currency to be destroyed we don't want the marines to land it's a whole different argument, right? It introduces something very sensitive into the picture. They know that gun is at their head. So the IMF can put pressure on El Salvador in different ways, right? They can't destroy the value of their currency because the currency is the US dollar. So instead, they'll lower their junk rating. They'll put out all kinds of FUD. They'll use any of the other tricks from their classic playbook of five lies and deception that they use to crush everyone.

But they don't have that gun to their head like they have with everyone else. Right. I think that most people don't appreciate the history of that storyline in the 1970s, 1980s. I mean, effectively, every single leader that was ousted, every coup, every dictatorship, as they like to call it, was a result of basically the CIA, IMF and World Bank policy. Right. And so they're very lucky, I guess, El Salvador, that they have the dollar and that's not going to happen in that direct way. But it has to give you pause that there's a lot of people out there that really don't want this experiment to work. Exactly. Absolutely. And they're going to make sure to put all kinds of pressure on El Salvador because, you know, the next country that goes, if this country has its own currency, that's when the battle is really lit. Because that's when we have to have all our ducks in a row to give this country massive support.

I mean, we have to be able to form all the corridors. You have to be ready to put all the corridors you have to be ready to put massive education in place right this is not at that point we're not just playing we're not just playing checkers or even chess we're playing the great game right this is game this is game of thrones on a globe level we're fighting for first year we're not messing around. So we got to be ready for this. We need time. IMF comes with the ice dragon, just blaze it down the wall. Right. And so basically the next country that does this, if they're not using the United States dollar is going to have to

effectively be ready to be completely self-sufficient when they make that move. Yeah. Yeah. Everything has to be placed. It can't be another sloppy Chivo wallet launch. It has to be like a military operation with massive educational campaigns in place. We're a beautifully working ecosystem of applications, corridors ready, businesses signed on. It has to be done with absolute precision and we are not there yet we are absolutely not there yet so we have to think about it like that it's we're not playing like it's not a trivial game anymore we're literally going up against you know the prince of darkness

here you better have your shit together yeah you were one of the first people whose feet landed in el salvador when this news broke right so? So, I mean, you've seen this process from day one. What was that like, right? I mean, I was at the Bitcoin convention when Jack came up and he announced it, but actually being there in El Salvador to watch that happen had to be a totally different experience. It was great. I met the first day I went there and I met people in the government and I was surprised how young they were. Great energy. And they were like moving quickly. Like they weren't, you know, finding excuses or they were looking for solutions like a startup. And I was like, wow, this is a real startup field. This is awesome.

Spent three hours talking to them. I'm like, OK, I'm out of here. Went to the car, went straight down to El Zante. I want to see for myself what's going on in the streets here. And again, I was met with, you know, so much, it just smiles like warmth, like people, real community-driven adoption here, people that will take time to explain things. And that's why people will be selling pupusas for Bitcoin because no one was trying to push anything on them. It's like, hey, I'm your friend. I teach your kid how to surf every morning. Let me show you something cool. I went to the Bitcoin Hope House. There's a lot of brilliant people working there. And I was impressed with the talent. And now the last time I was there, it's been a complete level up. I mean, all the talent of Latin America is now flooding Intel's

El Salvador. I met so many brilliant people from Venezuela, from Colombia, from Brazil, all with amazing projects, all meeting there. The amount of connections that happened was amazing. The amount of amazing projects and talent, staggering. It was honestly one day they were just talking about legal tender. It was adopted in government 48 hours later. And then all of a sudden we were mining Bitcoin from volcanoes. But that shows you when a small government with young leaders, as you said, moves into action on something, it's exponentially faster than a Titanic, like, quote unquote, first world government, like the United States or something like that. We can't even get regulation in the United States. We can't even get a sentence about regulation in the United States for years. And El Salvador is mining Bitcoin from volcanoes after a couple of weeks. It gave me power in government. It gave me hope and confidence in government and what it could be. You know, there are examples in history of countries going from literally the poorest country in the world to the richest in a span of three to four years. And those examples have all been brushed over and just hidden away.

But it's possible if you get a team startup mentality that actually wants to make real change. The right playbook is out there. That's why I keep the same thing over and over again. The default state of humanity is abundance, wealth, and prosperity. And we're so close to that right now. All the tools are far and in place. We just have to keep converging together and be able to execute on the ground rapidly. The template is forming, brother. It's crazy, though, because your average person probably, certainly in this country, would think that the opposite sentiment is true, right? You're like, everything's in place, abundance, and then we see, you know,

all the wealth in the hands of 1% of the world and everybody else suffering. And so, I mean, that's a message of great hope. Is that realistic that Bitcoin can bring that to everyone? Absolutely. If you study history, real history, you'll know that. But the problem is people don't study real history. The reason we're in this mess that we're in, and by mess, I mean a completely broken civilization, is quite simply because we are drowning in a sea of lies. That is the world that we're living in. We don't know which way is up. We don't know which way is down. We don't know

who the bad guys are. Everything is like WWF. We are confused and we don't even know where to start to fix the problem. We look at politicians and we think it's all about money. Is it really all about money? If central bankers can create money at will, then they don't really value money. It's a tool of control for them. The question is control for what purpose? I don't want to go too deep down the rabbit hole here, especially not with these wicked hiccups I'm having right now. But I will say this, brother, the best thing about Bitcoin, the best thing, besides it actually allowing people to be wealthy and giving us an open financial system, oh, that's amazing. But to me, the best thing is that it actually got me to ask questions. Ultimately, this battle is a battle for the human mind. And the question I began to ask is, what is money? Like, what is money really? Where does it come from? And Bitcoin gave me the answer to that.

And from that, from understanding how that pillar of power was corrupted, we can understand everything else. And we just do the same playbook that they did. They took that pillar of power, money, corrupted it, used it to acquire the other pillar of power, media control, right? So they can control the minds of the people and with that they can acquire political control, which will give them military control so they can get all things all churned up, have us fight each other and emerge with more power after that. And then they rinse and repeat every 60 years. And they take more and more and more. And their plan, well, I'm not going to get into their plan in totality,

but we're not going to be ahead in that plan should they win. Now that we understand that and we are asking questions, it won't just stop with money or journalism. Now people are asking questions about health. People are asking questions about science. They're beginning to question everything. That is the real victory, brother. We are not afraid to ask questions anymore. Once human beings are willing to do their own thinking for themselves, despite how bad they might look, that's when we'll have true victory. Guys, I'm so excited to tell you about this new crypto cold storage solution called Arculus. Their cold storage

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And if someone were to get a hold of your card, it doesn't even matter because they have three-factor authentication, ensuring that the only person with access to your crypto is you. Guys, you can check out Arculus at thewolfofallstreets.link slash Arculus. That's A-R-C-U-L-U-S. Buy your Arculus on Amazon today. Have you ever been trading crypto and during bouts of high volatility had your exchange go completely offline or seen the order books go

thin and have absolutely no liquidity for your trade? I know that you have. It's happened to every single crypto trader, but it's not an issue anymore thanks to Bullish. Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with confidence across variable market conditions, while secure in a regulated environment that's backed by multi-billion dollar liquidity contributions from the Bullish treasury. Follow at Bullish on Twitter or visit the wolf of all

streets dot link slash bullish to learn more. Not investment advice, digital assets and cryptocurrencies are high risk products. Consult your professional advisor before dealing in them. Bullish services are available in select locations only and not to U.S. persons. Visit the wolf of all streets dot link slash bullish for important information and risk warnings. And you spent time in El Salvador, as I said, and didn't you set up an education center there? Did I read that correctly? Absolutely. Cost of no Bitcoin for me.

Okay. So why set that up, right? You could set up a business center. You could push the Paxful vision in El Salvador. You set up an education center. Absolutely, bro. Because if you're really going to learn about something new, especially something as close to the bone and the heart as money. You need to be in a place of comfort. You need to be in a place of trust. It needs to be like

your own home. You know, you've ever been to a bar that you would go in and it feels like you're walking into your own house and sit down and have a great conversation and your heart was open to anything that would come your way. You need that same kind of vibe. So people can come in, see smiles, see people just like them, and they can just learn. We had a 67-year-old man come in. His name was Alejandro. Came in, 67 years old, sat down, and he was asking questions,

asking more questions than anyone else. And at the end, he said, I got it. I understand this Bitcoin thing. And he bought some Bitcoin. That's beautiful. And that's exactly the kind of atmosphere you need to start a real educational snowball. It has to be a place where anyone can walk in and can feel like home. There are no expectations.

You are not expected to make a transaction or buy in at the end of the process, right? This is just a place where anyone can come in and you are welcome. And that's it. That's what started. That's the exact spirit of Bitcoin Beach. And that's what got El Salvador going. And we're just taking it to another level right now. And everyone is welcome to come there and speak.

And also the Bitcoin, you know, anyone can come over, anyone can speak, anyone can meet the people themselves. We invite every influence, every educator, every evangelizer to come on down and share a piece of your love with the people. So obviously you've been all over the world evangelizing for Bitcoin. We talked about the fact that the next country would have to come really correct if they're going to try to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Do you have any idea of maybe not on that same level, but what other countries may be the next dominoes to fall with some sort of adoption or legislation surrounding crypto? Well, we've been talking to several countries in Africa and the Middle East. I will say they move very slowly, but I was really impressed with the people in Tunisia and also Uganda. In fact, the mayor of Entebbe wants to make it a Bitcoin city.

And that's how things start. You know, once a small local region builds up, you get the youth. And then the whole country can come through. Now, again, if that country actually uses anything other than the US dollar as legal tender, introduced tremendous complications, but everyone is actually looking at El Salvador right now. And they're looking very closely, which is why the World Bank and Bank of International Settlements are taking it seriously. They don't want the snowball effect to happen here. So as we talk right now, there's literally a war, an all-out war brewing. And you've got old men sitting in think tanks and plotting and planning because no one saw this coming, right? These guys usually think ahead 20 years, right, when they hatch plots and plans.

But this came straight out of left field. And that is the power of a small group of humans to change things. It feels like we all need to just go buy the Bitcoin bond, right? And make sure that there's tons of money in El Salvador then. I mean, is that what we should be pushing for to support them? It's not like, yeah, like how do you fight the IMF if you're just want to support El Salvador? Is it just some sort of investment in that country so that they can survive without money from one of these agencies? Well, I'm not a financial advisor. I don't know if you should buy bonds. I don't really understand bonds. I'm going to be honest with you, but you can go to El Salvador. You can

enjoy the most awesome beaches there. You can buy a property over there. And that is not, believe me, if you just go there, this place is one of the best places in the world. I've never felt more at peace there. My favorite hotel, I think, in the world is there. It's right in El Azante. Start with that and let it go from there. And you have like one of my favorite sayings ever that you said, I believe, I'm trying to take the quote, Bitcoin is for the millions, not for the millionaires. Is that correct? Bitcoin is for the millions, not for the millionaires. But the narrative, at least here, is all about the millionaires, right? It's Bill Miller and Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones and Michael Saylor and everybody who's adopting it and what institution will be next. Does that help or hurt the actual cause at the end of the day, right? Weren't we supposed to short the bankers and long Bitcoin?

Well, as far as the price of Bitcoin, it helps, but spiritually, it does hurt us. It creates a lot of noise that keeps us away from what's really important. And that's the global South and each person and real use cases. Very few people are focusing on that. Very few are willing to actually go and hit boots on the ground in these places. This narrative that we've been putting out there for the past seven years, it's just now starting to catch on, but Paxful is 450 people. We're not that big. Binance is bigger than us. All these companies are so much bigger. So we have a lot of work to do. So the billionaires, they're cool. But I mean, guys like Elon Musk and these guys have an extremely adverse effect on the entire industry.

The whole crypto thing is a complete and total disaster. You know, the whole blockchain, not Bitcoin. Again, that was a canard to distract us. And now we've got a myriad of shit coins and NFT, you know, shit coins with JPEGs and the metaverse. And now you can throw around your shit coins with JPEGs. It is distracting people from the biggest opportunity in the world. And the people that follow the money are always the people, the ones that get hurt, especially on retail. Whenever any of these blow ups and bubbles happen, I always roll my eyes.

I was like, I know at the end of this, there's going to be a huge, you know, casualty rate of people that don't ever want to deal with crypto again. And they don't understand that Bitcoin is not crypto. Bitcoin is Bitcoin. So, yeah. Such important sentiment. Fidelity just had that amazing report that, you know, it was called Bitcoin First. And they basically talked about what you just said, but I've been saying this forever.

Listen, I have no problem. Everyone knows that I love the technology side of it. I love investing in these other coins, but I don't like that Bitcoin is even in the same basket. It should literally be Bitcoin and everything else, and they should never be conflated or confused, right? And so it's like loving gold and also loving stocks. There should not be a conflict there, right?

You should know that it's a completely different kind of investment. And I agree with you. It definitely minimizes everything to these very simple narratives that are likely incorrect when you're actually on the ground, right? Now we just say Bitcoin, digital gold. That's the only thing that people talk about it for and forget that the white paper said peer-to-peer cash, right? And you're saying it's peer-to-peer cash everywhere you go. Bitcoin is really a manifestation of human defiance and love of freedom. That's what Bitcoin is. Everything else is technology. It can be useful speculative asset. Cool. I'm not saying people shouldn't play those games. Good luck to them. But we literally have the biggest opportunity, bigger than the Internet,

bigger than the Gutenberg, you know, printing press, bigger than anything. We have to do most of it. We need the best minds on it, and we need to mobilize right now. El Salvador must be a success because there's a lot bigger fish coming after El Salvador. We really have to be ready. Think about it like this if jesus were to come back and touch down right now in syria what do you think is going to happen he's going to get marked man he needs people there to support him are we going to be there we're going to be ready for that brother right that's a bitcoin bitcoin jesus although

i guess that that name was ascribed to somebody incorrectly a long time ago so maybe maybe not the uh not the the best term but so do you think that this movement this is one of those situations where it's inevitable it's just a matter of how fast it happens and how much adoption or do you think that it's still so nascent that it could theoretically be stopped? We have to have a lot of respect for, you know, the bad guys out there and how they think and how they work. We really should respect them because, you know,

they've been in the game for a long time and they think at least 20 years in advance, their tactic and their playbook is very advanced. It stopped almost every movement that's happened, you know, in the past, what, 400 years? However, I got to say, this bunch of Bitcoin maxis that we have, these guys, savages, man. They cannot be stopped. We have a troll meme army of epic proportions here.

I think they did not expect me. Where the hell did these guys come from? They are ruthless. I mean, you've got guys like Saifedean, like Francis Palloud. Like, these guys are savage, man. And they literally cannot be co-opted. You can't get one thing on them. They were not expecting that.

I mean, there's a lot of toxic maxis out there. I've encountered them. And I don't like how these guys talk to people a lot of toxic maxis out there. I've encountered them and I don't like how these guys talk to people. Some of them are condescending. Some of them treat women poorly. But besides the bad apples, literally the greatest asset we have besides Bitcoin itself is this Falnox unit of stalwart warriors, these Bitcoin maximalists, optimalists that are not taking any shit from anyone and they are not letting even a single thing slide. And that is really amazing. I have never seen a community so vigorous, so strong, and so just impenetrable as this. I've never seen it in my entire life. It's an amazing asset. We should be very thankful for it.

It's amazing to hear you say that because anyone who didn't listen to the first podcast probably, or doesn't know your history, doesn't know that like you basically voluntarily just landed in Egypt during the Arab spring and, and, you know, hit the front lines because it was the right thing to do. So for you to say that Bitcoin max was the most stalwart people that you've seen when you participate in the Arab spring is quite, quite the statement. Absolutely. I've met some of the strongest people I've ever met in my life here. And these aren't big buff warrior looking types, but it's not about that. These guys defend boundaries. That is what the warrior energy is about. And they defend it without giving up a

single inch. It's absolutely is absolutely beautiful and is an absolute requirement for victory. So we have that. We're good. Yeah. So we talk about El Salvador, South American nations, African nations, but perhaps the biggest news of late has been Russia. A couple of weeks ago, the central bankers said, we're going to ban crypto. And then, of course, went 180 degrees. And now we're saying that they're going to recognize Bitcoin and crypto as currencies. What does adoption, we won't even call it adoption, what does regulation or at least acceptance in a country like Russia mean in this sort of larger geopolitical game theory that's happening? So I don't really know much about the politics there,

but I will tell you this, the perspective I have on Russia, you're not going to get anywhere else, brother. So if you look at Russia and what it actually is right now, I would say that Russia is Rome. The last bastion of Byzantium, the Orthodox Church, is strongest in Russia. It is prophesied that Rome will win this end times battle that we have. So I always knew in my heart that Russia would come to accept and champion crypto.

And it finally happened. We do have people in Russia that we talk to. And the Russians are moving. They see where things are going. I think Russia and the entire CIS, all those ex-Soviet nations, will start to adopt crypto for remittance, and you're going to see it become a global clearing layer that will replace SWIFT. This will happen in Russia first, because they know what's coming. This proxy war with Ukraine will not end there. There are forces in the world that are pushing the United States, Russia, and China to mutually

destroy each other. And everyone knows this. And the Russians are not going to back down. They have a very strong government. They have a true Christian leader right now in Vladimir Putin. And they actually are like trying to serve their people. They really are. So I think Russia, if you're really looking to grow things in crypto, go to Russia. Start building for the CIS nations, real use cases, remittances. I think Bitcoin could replace Swift in Russia and Africa first. It's already doing in Africa. That's happening in Africa. Yeah. So, I mean, that begs the bigger question, obviously, how does the United States react to Russian adoption? I know it's just conjecture.

Nobody knows the answer to that. It's just we know that the United States is kind of just wavering here and doing the usual, we'll kick the can down the road and maybe we'll regulate something in a couple of years and being slow and difficult. We've got to imagine that Russia making this move is going to light a fire here. It will. Now, it's already lit a fire. I think Americans knew that the Russians would do this. The question is, how fast do they move in putting up the walls and barriers to stop this? Because tomorrow the United States could say, hey,

all SWIFT payments into Russia are banned. Right. All Russian banks have lost access to the American ACH system. They could do this tomorrow. If they want to. Say Russia switches to Bitcoin or any form of crypto that they so choose. What walls will they put around that to further starve and narrow them off?

It's a game of political brinksmanship, and it's also a game of financial brinksmanship. I think it will escalate slowly for a little while, but them pressing the red button on shutting off the pathways could happen at any time. A lot of people don't understand how close we are to midnight and how close we've been to midnight for the past 10 years. And by close to midnight, that was a term they used in the 60s where it just meant, yeah, exactly. Someone would push the button, right? And we've been that close for a very long time. It's crazy. And you talk about the idea that there's effectively three superpowers that are sort of vying for one another and looking for mutually assured destruction, I guess.

China went completely the other way of what I would have thought was rational. China was in a position to completely control the entire market to some degree, right? They had the bulk of the hash rate, arguably a bulk of the hash rate, arguably a bulk of the coins and demand and decided for an outright ban and to take themselves out of this game entirely. Yeah, and I expected that they would as well. And not because I'm some geopolitical genius, I'm not at all.

But spiritually, I understand what's happening. I mean, look at Russia. It's a Christian, God-fearing nation. China, look what they're doing to the Muslims over there. Look how they cheated the Christians before. The Chinese Communist Party thinks that they are God. Right. Of course, they would make a move like that.

And, you know, they would switch sides in a second. They're currently with Russia. But if they thought, well, who would lose? They would switch over to the American side in a second. They're currently with Russia, but if they thought who would lose, they would switch over to the American side in a moment. So they cannot be counted on because they're not a spiritually positive force. So what can your average person do at this point in 2022, ignoring all of the geopolitical issues

and all of this to help further adoption? And I'm not talking, okay, so we know what's happening in these countries where you've been on the ground. I'm an American guy. I have the luxury of a great banking system. We'll call it great, I guess. And I could theoretically live without crypto

the rest of my life and I would be fine. But how can we, those people, contribute to moving this movement forward all over the world, not just in El Salvador, as I said before? Well, I don't like to plug my own stuff, but I will say that. Yeah. So it's an actual problem that people have, and it's good to talk about this. So people, whether they're in India, Africa, South America, wherever, they want to access American markets.

Maybe even just buying goods, whether it's a Nigerian trying to buy a car in Detroit or someone in Kenya trying to buy a sofa in Connecticut and have it sent over, whatever it might be, they have a lot of trouble making those payments, right? They can't send money abroad easily, for example, because the central banks don't want to keep the foreign money for themselves. So what do they do? They will go on to Paxful and they will see if they can sell Bitcoin to someone in the United States that will pay the invoice for them. And they'll upload the invoice for you and say, hey, just pay this invoice for me.

I'm just trying to buy this stuff. If Americans want to acquire Bitcoin at a discount, mind you, because they're willing to lose a few percentage points off of it just to make the payment, because otherwise it's completely impossible, or extremely expensive. By extremely expensive, I mean they'll lose anywhere from 10% to 20% from their bank, mind you, if they can use it. So if you want to buy Bitcoin at a discount, put up an offer on Paxful to buy Bitcoin for a bank transfer and be willing to make a third-party payment for someone.

You'll have to KYC, but they'll happily upload an invoice for you. And you will be helping African and global South businesses access, you know, run their business. And you'll get Bitcoin at a huge discount as well, which is not bad. Now, that's never a never a bad thing and never really possible. So listen, I know before we go, I want to talk about your op ed and Bitcoin magazine. I think that we

covered most of it talking about Africa, obviously. But I would say that I said before that we really haven't been hearing this story. But that story that you told did really go sort of wildly viral and at least start of piquing people's interest again. Was there anything that we didn't cover that was in that op-ed? There's a lot, actually. I mean, namely the talent. The talent in Africa is absolutely staggering. I can't tell you.

Every time I go to Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Tunisia, wherever it might be, Egypt now, things are blowing up there. There's just the amount of brilliant young people that you will meet that are super enthusiastic, super energized and ambitious is absolutely insane. I wanted to literally hire all these people. But honestly, I couldn't, but so many of them want to do their own thing that's how driven they are the amount of energy there is insane like for example one of one of my friends his name is kola i know he runs venture fund in nigeria he's between nigeria and oxford it's one of the most successful funds in all of africa you're going to start

seeing these african funds absolutely blowing up i don't know if you can or how you can invest in them, but the explosion that we've seen out of Western Africa with things like Paystack and all these things, it's literally a drop in the bucket compared to what's coming. Over these next 10 years, you're going to see an explosion in Africa and in India as well of wealth and value creation that is absolutely unprecedented and everyone will be left like with their heads reeling like how is this even possible I know what's going to happen who's actually seen the talent there so I don't know what to tell people I think you just get on a plane and go to Africa and meet these people you can go to the Bitcoin Center in Abuja that

we built. You can go to, I can connect people with people in Lagos and just see what's happening there. Like you cannot discount the amazing talent that is coming out of Africa, India, and the entire global South, right? And they are finally getting a voice. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the charge is being led in unexpected places and that one day everyone's just going to wake up and not believe what happened. And they're just going to be shocked and say, you know, we thought that this was an American thing or a European thing. And all of a sudden it's completely co-opted for a better, superior use in other places. I'm not talking smack about Silicon Valley, but those boys are done. Yeah, I think they're saying that. I think that that sentiment, I think,

is actually somewhat widespread. Yeah. It's finished, Matt. So you think we're going to see the next, maybe not, it's a false comparison, but the next Googles and Facebooks and Amazons coming out of Africa and as a result of the brilliant people there and Bitcoin adoption to some degree. Absolutely. Absolutely. And they're going to be mostly around finance to start. But once that spine is there and is rapidly coming there, you're going to see, you're going to literally, the truth is the amount of talent that's there, the West really can't compete with that talent and level of toughness anymore.

You know, like we have become soft. We become apathetic. We just don't care. Those people care. They are ready to fight. I mean, this level of hunger. They have to care. The level of hunger there is absolutely tremendous.

And the only reason they have not already risen to the top is because they are literally working with a gun to their head and kept in this little financial prison. Those walls, those bars are melting away. They're almost gone, really. If you know about Bitcoin, those bars don't exist for you anymore. Those people are getting rich and they're making the people around them rich. We're seeing the formation of a new world right here. I don't want to alarm people, but actually I kind of do. Well, look, it's like I said before, people are asking questions right now.

Asking questions about everything, whether it's about COVID, you know, science, health, anything, money. There are no more sacred cows. Everything is up for grabs right now. Everything is up for questioning. Once a civilization starts to do that, and they actually have the tools to resist and build wealth in centers that are not controlled, you're going to start seeing the formation of a new world. Gulf's Gulch in Ayn Rand, right?

It was the place where all the enlightened people that were ready to make real change could go. You're going to start seeing Gulf's Gulches all over the world right now. You know, we'd be lucky if we had one in Miami, America, but Africa will probably have like 30. India will have another 30. Latin America will have another 23. Like all these places are popping up

and there are no more borders. People vote with their feet. The world has already changed. COVID has actually worked in our favor. And by our favor, I mean humans. You know, these, you know, you know, the powers that be can plot and plan all they want.

But karma's a bitch, man. And they can't control everything. They don't know who meets who. They can't control the feelings and emotions in people's hearts. They can't control the questions that pop in people's head. And people are not afraid to ask those questions. And there's people right now that can give them answers. The world has already changed, brother.

It's only a matter of time. Good guys are prophesied to win, and we will win this thing. We just have to win it in this generation. If we don't, it's going to be a thousand years of darkness, and I refuse to have 40 generations of my children fighting. I'll win it right now. That should be first and foremost on our minds. I love Galtch gulch. So we can conclude by saying that Atlas is currently shrugging, I guess. Where can everybody follow you after this conversation? Keep up with everything that you're doing. I know you're in a different country every day. So following you is impossible. Well, yeah, don't try to I've been working out, you know, don't spook. Ray Paxful on Twitter, Instagram,

Telegram, just hit me up anywhere. I'm happy to have a chat. And I know that you actually mean that because I remember in our first conversation, you said that like you were customer service for all of your, everyone who would call Paxful, no matter what time of day, what time of night, it was you. Absolutely. I still do it. Like you see Reds on Reddit, they're like, just go straight to the CEO, right? It will do, he'll fix your problem. And I do that because I do want to help people, but even more importantly,

so much insight into our company processes and what's wrong and what can be improved. And ultimately, if anyone here in this business has been blessed with the honor to be a CEO and run a company, think of it of running your own little country. All the things that annoy you about the country that you live in, whether it's something as small as going to the DMV or going to the hospital, all these processes that you think are broken, why don't people care? If you are blessed to be in a position of leadership, we can change every one

of those things and make a better example for the future that will eventually lead to nation state adoption. But of course, it all starts with giving a damn. Absolutely. Absolutely love it, man. Thank you so much for doing this. Once again, everybody, please go check out Paxful and follow Ray. Like I said, one of the most inspiring, certainly personalities in this space and that I've ever met. And we're not going to wait. Last time was August, 2020. We're not going to wait another year and a half to do this again. Maybe three, six months. We'll have you back on and get an update. So thank you very much for taking the time. Am I going to see you in Miami, bro? Oh yeah. Are you going to be there in April? Oh yeah. Okay. All right. See you in Miami. All right. Perfect you in Miami. All right. Thanks man.