The Wolf Of All Streets - Breaking Down The Payment Wall With Bitcoin: Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Ray Youssef is the CEO of Paxful, a people-powered marketplace allowing people to send, receive and transact in Bitcoin all around the world. After Ray failed 11 times to build a successful startup, he noticed the one thing in common among his attempts was worldwide payment walls that were impossible to avoid. He set out to design a Bitcoin solution, opening world markets regardless of location, government, oppression or education.  Scott Melker and Ray Youssef further discuss starting life as a 1st generation Egyptian immigrant, being an activist in the Egyptian Revolution and Occupy Wallstreet, the walled gardens blocked by payments, failing at 11 different startups before Paxful, Nigerian Princes and overcoming scams, building 100 schools in Africa, teaching Bitcoin to the people of Africa, an imminent golden age of humanity and more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

I'd like to thank my sponsors, Round the X and Voyager, for making today's episode possible. We'll hear much more about them later on in the episode. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast, where twice a week we talk to your favorite personalities in the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, music, art, politics, sports, basically anyone who has an interesting story to tell. This show is powered by Blockworks Group, which is a media company with a network of over 20 podcasts. You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. If you like the podcast and you follow me on Twitter, then you definitely have to check out my website and my newsletter. You can find both of those and a whole lot more

of what I've got to offer at thewolfofallstreets.io. Now let's get on to what's more important, which is today's guest. He's the CEO and co-founder of Paxful, which is a global peer-to-peer marketplace for Bitcoin. Now, what they've built is really incredible. He's allowing the underbanked and unbanked in the world to participate in finance and developing countries where they need it most. But what's most impressive is they now reach 4 million users. They've done billions of dollars in Bitcoin trades and have 300 unique ways to trade all of the things that you own to get Bitcoin. So Ray, man, I can't wait to hear all about this. It's a pleasure to have you and thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me,

Scott. Really appreciate it. It's a great show you have here and a great following. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. So you seem like such a cool dude, man. And all the research I've done is like you just have this crazy background. So I really like to just start at the beginning. Where are you from? Like what drives you? How did you get here? So I'm a New Yorker. My first generation immigrant from Egypt came over when I was two years old.

My mother, father came over with me and my little sister for the promise of a better life. And a lot of immigrants will say the same thing. So they're living in a world where they have to leave where they're from, leave their family, leave their language, and go to a completely new place, which is kind of scary because that's where opportunity was. So fast forward 43 years later. That's how old I am at 43. Now I'm trying to build a world where people don't have to leave their homes. They can actually stay at home and build their communities. They're build their own businesses. They're working online, connecting people together. That's the future that I, I want now. So

people won't have to go through what my parents went through. So, we came to New York. I grew up in Columbus Circle, New York in the 80s and 90s when it was very, very rough and there was no Daisy's Penthouse. A little different than Columbus Circle now. It's a completely different world. But I learned a lot of things, you know, growing up on the streets. My parents had a candy store in New York. That's what I learned. I had to do business, straight retail with people, just people. And that's what prepared me for this business.

So I had two startups early on. I majored in computer, no, I majored in history and I didn't take any computer classes. I took one and I failed actually. And then I built two. Yeah, exactly. And then I built two startups, which were very, very successful. I bought my mother a beautiful home. And then, uh, you know, I left because I was kind of fed up. The first startup I did was ringtones. It was like the Napster of ringtones. It was peer to peer ringtones.

And it worked out beautifully. That's right. When Napster went down, we were the leading service where we had to keep under the radar because we didn't want to get sued. But after that, I was so disgruntled with the music industry. I just took a break for a little while, traveled the world, did mixed martial arts, boxing, and then my mother sold her house in the before. So I had to, prime years of my life, just failing over and over and over again. And as hard as it was, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now unless I had the experience of every single one of those startups. So that was 11 startups that you literally failed at in seven years? Yeah. Do you have ADD like me? Like, what's up?

I'm a serial entrepreneur entrepreneur which basically means i'm unhirable i mean serial entrepreneurship is an amazing thing but at a certain level it kind of turns into a mental illness but you just ride through it and uh you get the gifts you get i joked with someone recently that i was psychologically unhirable but just because like uh i don't know if it's, you know, authority or just that I, you know, always kind of feel like I have my own way that I want to do it, and it's going to probably differ from, you know, the person who's in a position of power over me.

But I'm somewhat similar. I mean, I can't even count the amount of times that I've failed. You know, in my 20 years DJing and doing music, I have probably had 10, 12, 15 side businesses, projects, things. Yeah, there are varying levels of success, but none really broke through like what you've done here. Exactly. People ask me, how can you fail 11 times in a row? And the truth is, some of those businesses did make money. They could have sustained me and I could have done okay, but I knew it would never, it would never change the world.

It would never be something that would really make the world different. And that's what I fought for. I just scrapped myself. I'm going to keep going until I find that one thing that can change the world. And oddly enough, every single one of those startups I had, every single startup you do now, no matter who you are, you will always hit the wall of payments. And it's always the same old story. Go set up a merchant account with Visa and MasterCard and same old story. And that's where we start.

That's where we start. Okay. So then obviously you had, so failure is a misnomer. You just kind of moved on from a lot of them, which is the sort of a similar experience. Like, you know, I can make a little money, but I need to do something bigger. So why Bitcoin? You know, like what's your Bitcoin story? When did you find it? And, you know, why did you see it as a solution that you were willing to basically bet everything on? Well, when I first heard about it, the first time I heard about it, I dismissed it as nerd money. Everyone did. time i heard about i dismissed it as nerd money everyone did dude everyone did well almost everyone and then i started to meet people in the community and the first bitcoin meetup i went to i actually

met my co-founder paul blonde guy sitting in the corner someone introduced me to him we became fast friends we really connected over the idea that bitcoin could help the little guy. And that's what started it all. That's what brought me and Artur Schaubach together, is that we thought that, hey, this Bitcoin thing, however hard it is to use and complex it is to use, it has the potential to connect people together so that we don't have to ask for permission anymore. Little did we know at the time,

we didn't understand how bad the problem was we didn't understand how bad the problem was. You only understand how bad the problem was when you leave the West, when you go to the global South, when you go to Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and you see the restrictions that people have with money, especially in Africa. And I'll give you guys some examples later because the best thing I can do right now is to share everything i've learned from all our time on the ground with you guys so what time what year was it that you actually found bitcoin and decided then to start patchful well i discovered bitcoin around 2013 started around 2015 we just celebrated our fifth anniversary. Just a few days. Which is like a thousand years in this business, in this space. Yeah, we're ancient already. Yeah, not many of the 2015 businesses are still here. But what was it that drove you to even care

about the little guy? I mean, it's cool to say we found this kind of money. I realized it would help the little guy, but most people aren't out there to actually help people. So what why, you know, what is it in your experience that drives you towards actually changing the world and having that impact on individual people's lives? I don't really have a clear answer for you there, but I'm still trying to understand myself. But I can have this white knight or hero complex. You know, when I heard about the Egyptian revolution, the first time I heard about it, I saw those Egyptians in Tahrir Square protesting. I was so inspired. I got on a plane immediately and went over there. And I had very little connection with Egypt. I could barely speak Arabic.

But I just went there because I wanted to help. And I got there the first day that the real bloody fighting started, the day of the camel, 800 people died in Tahrir Square. I was there fighting with them the entire time. I got wounded. I got arrested by the army. It was quite the experience, but I was the only one going there. Everyone else was trying to leave.

And I was the same thing with Occupy Wall Street. I came back from the Egyptian Revolution. Occupy Wall Street was going down. I'm like, hey, I was looking for a way to actually change the world. What is so broken about this world that us humans can't get it together? So it was just a spiritual discovery, a journey of mine. And I knew I was destined for something greater. I was in Occupy Wall Street.

I slept there overnight. And finally, things started coming together. All this happened as I was having a kind of spiritual political awakening. So I know it's a pretty muddy answer, but it's not a muddy answer. Not a muddy answer at all. I'm just always curious where like activism comes from in certain people. Some people, it always seems to be like deeply ingrained from their parents. I mean, my parents marched on Washington. They were woodstock hippies, so I always had that as a child and it's been a part of me. But I wouldn't have rushed off to Egypt to participate in the Arab Spring either, even if it was my heritage, most likely. Just being honest, like you said, most people were rushing away from that. So you're definitely a unique, unique person that you would would uh do something like that were your parents activists or like was it growing up in new york city in the 80s and 90s and because i mean what a crazy time you know no my parents were definitely not activists they didn't care at all

they were just working making money and i've done that other times in my life too i went to new orleans right after hurricane katrina and helped rebuild the first school to open up in the entire city with five nuns that I met. I was just guided by God to be there. And that's what gave me this real focus on education as well, because we opened up that first school. Only then could the city actually reopen. It was only then would the fire and police come back to the city because they have some place to put their children. Something as simple as that could lead to the opening of the new city. Whereas FEMA, the Salvation Army, Red Cross, they weren't of no help whatsoever to the situation. It was

five nuns focused on education that actually reopened the city. Crazy stories. Yeah. And nobody knows that, right? You would only know that if you were boots on the ground and you appeared because I've never heard that story. You know what I mean? And that's what showed me the power of being boots on the ground. When you actually go there yourself and see what's going on, the picture is completely different. It's a 180. And it's not just a little different. It literally is the exact opposite of what we're being told.

I went to Africa. And as an American, we only hear about three things in Africa, poverty, disease, and corruption. You go over there, you see an army of brilliant, well-educated entrepreneurs that are ready to move forward. They all have mobile phones or tech savvy and they're looking for a path. I saw that and I said, my goodness, that combined with all the financial restrictions, limitations these people have, Africa will lead cryptocurrency adoption. I said that four years ago. Everyone thought I was completely nuts. They said Africans can't figure it out. They only make $2 a day, blah, blah, blah. Fast forward now, it's happened. And it's only getting started.

Yeah, I've interviewed a few people in this space who were in the military and, you know, were sent to Afghanistan, Iraq, things like that. And what you just said sort of was what struck all of them and brought them to Bitcoin was my friend Andrew Elliott, who's the CEO of Roundly X, said that, you know, he was in Afghanistan. They were in these tribal villages and there's meat hanging there with flies all over it right next to the SIM card store. Right. And they don't even have electricity, but they all have cell phones.

And so to him, that's why he saw sort of Bitcoin as the answer, you know, later. And it seems like you had the same experience in Africa. Can you talk more about, I guess, that polarity of the things they don't have, but the things that they do have access to and how that can be used to better their lives? Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you talk about Africa, there's a few things we should start off with. Number one, the people are ready to move forward. They're very young. You know, Africa's 1.2 billion people, like 70% of them are young people. It's amazing. They all have mobile phones. They have data. They understand

the power of mobile wallets. That's where they understand Bitcoin. Right. I mean, they transact mobily regardless, right? I mean, even before Bitcoin. Exactly. And the thing that I really want to drive this point home, the reason that Paxful has taken off so well in Africa, and it's not because of Paxful per se, it's because the African people do business peer-to-peer. Like peer-to-peer is just a way of life. Even all their cultural systems, like these money rotation clubs.

In Nigeria, they call it Isusu. In South Africa, they call it Stockville. In Kenya, they call it Chama. These are all peer-to-peer financial structures that have developed over the course of millennia. And Africans just get it. In fact, the best way to understand Africa is to understand the problems that people have. In Africa, it's nearly impossible to send money from one country to the country right next door. It's easier to get on a plane and move your own body than it is to use the banking system to make a payment.

For people or corporations, they run into the same wall. So imagine how advanced would the United States be if you could not send money from New York to California? Yeah, I mean, it would be basically like the same thing you see, which is tribalism and completely separate cultures that are just thrown under a random umbrella, which is sort of what you see there. Exactly. Imagine if we could open up intercontinental settlements across all of Africa. There are 2,000 mobile payment networks in Africa. Only 3% of them talk to each other. Using something like Paxful, literally there are no walled gardens. Anyone can move money anywhere else. Why?

Because it's peer-to-peer. As long as someone has an account somewhere, the entire network can access that walled garden, whether it's an online wallet, a bank, a gift card, cash, whatever it might be. What we've actually done is we've created a universal translator for money. And it wasn't we that created it. We just listened to our customers. And they showed us the way, particularly our West African customers. I must tip my hat off to the people of Nigeria. We went there first, and I was so impressed by the business acumen of the Nigerian people and how they just

go about to solve a problem by any means. So whenever you talk about Nigeria, we always have to talk about scams. So let me just put this disclaimer out. Yes, there's a tremendous amount of corruption in Nigeria, but the Nigerian people are overwhelmingly honest and good business people. They are simply preyed upon by human organized scam rings from within and from without. I can give you guys a whole bunch of examples on that later, but I'll let you ask more questions. I can talk for a little bit. We all get our emails about the Nigerian princes, right? I mean, it's like almost a meme in the world now that that's used as one of the biggest scams. It's really sad. And I think that you just raised an important point, which is that, like, you can't judge the people of a country by the actions of their government. And I hope that that's true in the

United States and civilized countries as well, and not just in Africa, right? So, I want to talk about Paxful itself, how it works, you know, the beginnings and how it's evolved to what it is and how people actually use it on a day-to-day basis. Okay. Well, some great examples, but right now it's like a, it's a marketplace. Paxful is a people-powered marketplace for money transfers, right? So with any two peer-to-peer transactions, you can turn anything into Bitcoin. And then by selling the Bitcoin, you can turn Bitcoin into anything else.

350 payment methods, 123 currencies, you know, multiply those times each other, plus five use cases, right? So if you think about the use cases for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, there's a total of seven, right? So every technology starts out in the gray area, right? Silk Road, et cetera. We're way beyond that point that out in the gray area right silk road etc we're way beyond that point that's in the past it comes as speculative phase and we're currently knee-deep in that right now we've all you know tried our hands day trading we all dabble guys the old thing i'm not very good at that i will admit but that's the phase that we're in right now all the volume is there and

we can all see that it's a toxic thing. It's not really sustainable, right? There's a lot there that is great because it builds attention, but we have to move beyond that. And that's where the five real use cases come in, which are payments, remittance, wealth preservation, e-commerce, and the seventh is what I call social good. And that's where a whole built-in Bitcoin initiative comes in. So those are the use cases. Paxful can enable people to solve problems along any of those use cases. And I'll give you some examples. There's a fellow in South Africa.

He built his own version of Western Union on top of Paxful. What did he do? Typical journey of the entrepreneur. First, he identified a problem. There are migrant workers, Nigerians, in this case, working in South Africa. They don't have bank accounts down there.

They don't want them. They just get cash, but they want to send money back home to mama. They use Western Union. They pay 20%. It takes one to two days. Mama has to wait on a line for six hours. This guy just went to those guys, his Nigerian fellows, and said, hey, guys, put your cash into my South African bank account.

I will beat the price of Western Union by half, 50% off. Your mother will get the money straight to her bank account the same day or next day. And it worked. Once he put the money in his account, he took the cash, bought Bitcoin with it, then sold the Bitcoin to someone in Nigeria and gave him a list of bank accounts with amounts, send the money there. Done. That's his business. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's difficult for us to send money internationally, even from the United States, right? You're in the UK. If you want to send me money, I'm not getting it right away either. This is still...

I did an example of another remittance example where I was in Berlin. My friend Vicky, she's from Kenya. She wanted to send money to her sister in Kenya. And she says, you know, she pays Western Union 20%. It takes about a day, et cetera. I told her, does your sister have M-Pesa? She said, yeah. I'm like, okay, would she, would it be cool for her to get the money there? And she said, yeah, that'd be amazing. She could spend it right away. It'd be way better than her bank account, actually. I'm like, okay, cool. Give me your number. She gives me her sister's number. I go on to Paxful. I sell $100 worth of Bitcoin to a guy in Mombasa in Kenya for M-Pesa.

I give him the number. He sends her sister not $100 worth of Kenyan shillings to her M-Pesa account, but $104 in Kenyan shillings. Which is a huge difference. She made a profit there. Right. And some people actually do that. They'll look at the arbitrage rates, because Bitcoin costs more in some of these markets, and they're like, wait a minute. I can actually use this to start a business. And that's what people do. So it's not just low fees. It's not just no fees. We're actually getting paid.

Yeah. A lot of us who have sent Bitcoin have unfortunately experienced the other side of that, which is that sometimes it takes a little too long and it's worth less when it arrives. But it is nice when we, you know, I guess it's the nature of the beast is that that could go either way. But that's a little different than what you're talking about, because it's actually an arbitrage opportunity and the market's going to move up or down together in both of those places. So that gap will still be there in theory.

So our job is really to make things as simple as possible for people, even if that means making Bitcoin invisible in the process. And this is key for us, you know, maxis. I'm a maximalist. I sort of call myself an optimist, actually. I'm not a fanatic. It's all, if we have to abstract away Bitcoin from the process and even the peer to peer process, we should do that.

Because that's how we're going to get the mainstream, you know, we got our start because I was actually on the phone with people, like normal everyday people, mostly women teaching them how to buy their first Bitcoin with cash or a gift card on a janky little mobile phone. Because of that and all the feedback I got, I began to understand how important it was to simplify the process. And because we made it simpler for the unbanked, our first customers were the unbanked in America. Because we made the process simpler for them, the underbanked in Africa came to us.

And let me just say this. Almost every single one of our African users has a bank account. Some have many. But they're underbanked because they can't send money with their bank accounts outside of their local countries, especially not to the golden circle of finance in the West and Asia. They are out from that. So their banks don't even work. I mean, which leads to the question, like, certainly, I

think we know the answer in Africa, you probably can't trust your bank. But if you are in this golden circle in the West, can you trust your bank? Or, you know, you can, it seems like you can, but you know, with all the things that are happening in the global economy, and all the nonsense that we're seeing, is that going to always hold true? It's an interesting question. You know, it's like, yeah, we serve the underbank, but more and more I'm starting to see what I call the overbanked here in the West. Our banks won't leave us long. Where did you get the money? The guy just getting, selling caviar, right? And then everyone's busting their balls about it. Like, people just want to do

business. The banks have the biggest buildings in the world. They used to be all about customer service, financial service. There is no service anymore. We bring the service, and that's key for us in crypto. We must become a service-based industry. And to do so, we must talk to our customers. We must not be afraid of them. Our number one value here at Paxful, we only have three, stay connected to the streets. It's absolutely priceless. Yeah. I think I read that your own phone number is or is or was the customer service line. Like literally your mobile phone was a customer service line for Paxful. Is that true? Absolutely. Yeah. I spent six months of my life in the very early days, literally walking users,

customers through every step of the way on their mobile phones. And as painful as it was, it taught me so much about what people really need, you know, and no one else is doing that. I still do that. I still do customer service. I'm the CEO of the company. I'm doing customer service every day on my Twitter, my Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, everything. Why? Because I want to stay connected to the streets. Because that's the only way you can truly build things that people need. Yeah. You can't understand your business unless you're in the trenches, right? Which is why you probably see such a disconnect, you know, corporations and CEOs with what's actually happening in their

company down the line. But it's interesting that you would continue to do that. I mean, it seems like you probably would have learned the lessons. There's always new lessons to learn and you'll be surprised at who you meet. I'm going to Africa in about a few weeks. I'm going to be there for six months. I actually should have been there already for six months. Yeah. Yeah. My mission was to go to every single African country, start up Paxful offices there. We're putting the finishing touches on our third school in Kenya, and we'll be announcing a fourth school soon.

We're announcing a series of sustainable wells. We built our first one in Rwanda already. So there's big things happening. We also should have opened up our first incubator in South Africa, but that's coming soon as well because I will put this out there, guys. And I know I'm going to get some flack for this, but I believe that Africa is the next America, particularly Nigeria. People say I was crazy. They'll say I'm crazy now for saying this, but absolutely, I believe that 100%.

When you go there and you experience the level of talent that is there, the amount of unemployed geniuses just walking around, you will be absolutely shocked. That is where the trillionaires of the future will come from. Is that because, is it a function of being born with nothing and having that incredible hustle? Like you see what's possible in the West, but you don't have it. And, you know, you just want it. I mean, sort of like

the United States in its infancy, right? There was all this like, ego and trying to grow up. And yeah, it's the Wild West over there. It still is. And the people are ready to go. They have this incredible vigor and energy about them. Someone coined the term the cheetah generation. All these young, upwardly mobile young Africans are tech savvy, they're smart, they're just looking for a path. The aristocracy, the old fat hippos, right? They don't want things to move. But the young people do. And there's literally like a billion of them. But that's the opposite of how people view millennials in the United States. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Culturally sensitive point, I guess.

Right. Well, I mean mean i happen to think that millennials have had a terrible get a terrible rap and have had just like you know born into every kind of financial uh obstacle possible in the united states but still there is this like kind of overriding you know stigma that they're like living in their mom's basements and and are lazy and that definitely i don't think that's the case, but it's the opposite 100% of 180 degrees, certainly of what you're talking about, you've seen in Nigeria. Absolutely. I mean, young people all over the world are looking for a path. You know, there's so many unemployed young people out there and they're just looking for something.

Just the African people, they actually have several, like when I go to Africa and what we did, we went there last year, and we did a campus tour at eight different universities. And I learned so much. But the first thing that I told them is, hey, stop thinking of yourself as third world. You are not third world. You are perfectly poised to jump to the head of the race right now. Believe in yourself.

Believe you can be at the very top and best of your game. You don't have to look up to anyone. Just look around to your brothers and sisters, and you can build something yourself. You can do so from the comfort of your own home. When the young people of Africa hear that, their eyes light up. And let me just put in another note here, a little disclaimer. In Africa, when you say Bitcoin, the first word that comes to people's mind is scam. Scam, scam, scam, scam. Everywhere. Everywhere, but especially in Africa because they have been scammed mercilessly by multi-level marketing scams. When I asked all the young people there, I asked them, how many people here have been scammed or know something that has been scammed in a cryptocurrency mining operation, in a multi-level marketing scam, in one coin, whatever it might be. Literally,

almost everyone raised their hands. So sad. Everyone. But despite that, they're still willing to listen. Is there an opportunity here? And they say, yes, you don't have to use Bitcoin as an investment. It can use it as a means of exchange to help you or someone, you know, that has a problem with money, move their money and use it. And once you say that their ears really perk up and they're like, okay,

but how you can make a profit with this as well. Right. And then, then they really are ready. They're just completely open. And that's, what's so beautiful that they still have that despite what they've are ready. They're just completely open. And that's what's so beautiful, that they still have that despite what they've been through.

Africa will absolutely lead the way in cryptocurrency adoption for the next 10 years. Roundthex.com is one of my favorite companies in the entire crypto space. What they do is take all your small purchases and round them up to the nearest dollar and invest that spare change into any of over 30 crypto assets of your choice.

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You need to sell that scooter and get some Bitcoin. Right. So you can sell it for cash and sell it for M-Pesa, let's say. And okay, so you sell the scooter, you get money through M-Pesa. You can go on to Paxful and you can buy some Bitcoin with your M-Pesa account right there. You can also go on to Paxful and go to our sell section and say, hey, is there any way I can sell my Bitcoin to someone in Ethiopia for Ethiopian beard via bank transfer? Yes, we're building liquidity there, but let me just preface it and say, I'm going to be going to Ethiopia soon. So if anyone's listening here and they're in Ethiopia, I'm going to be in Addis Ababa maybe in a month.

And I would love to meet you and build real liquidity there. We will show you how to build your own OTC trading desk. But to finish the story, you can sell your Bitcoin to someone in Addis Ababa for cash transfer, and boom, you'll have the beard in your bank account. So with two peer-to-peer transfers, you just turned M-Pesa in Kenyan shillings

into Ethiopian beard in the Ethiopian bank account. What we are doing now is we're streamlining the process so you won't have to do two peer-to-peer transactions. You won't even have to know what Bitcoin is. It will be a very simple application. They'll take care of all of it on the back end and do the two trades for you. Incredible. People are already building those kinds of applications on the Paxful API as well. It really is amazing.

Right. And I think a lot of people in, you know, quote unquote, not to use the term you just sort of disparage, but first world countries, you know, they may view Bitcoin as sort of a insurance policy. I had Mark Yusko on the show and I think he called it schmuck insurance, you know, just a protection against the bank or a hedge against the bad behavior of your government and stuff. But that's like a luxury, right? Like I can own a little Bitcoin just in case. It's like life insurance or health insurance or any of those things. Most people in the world don't have that luxury. So I think Bitcoin is something different to them. Certainly in countries like Venezuela and Argentina and Lebanon. I'm curious, you've been to the places where hyperinflation is real and money is useless and has no value. What are the greatest use cases for Bitcoin on the ground in places like that, that people who listen to this or are here may just be completely off their radar or oblivious to?

It's a great question. So one of the reasons I do customer support, at least like every week, I'm actually on Paxful. I'm looking for those people that will type Bitcoin into a search engine for the very first time. And they come to us and they're like, you can tell because they have no idea what's going on. They're like, hi, what is Bitcoin? How do I get Bitcoin? What can I do with the Bitcoin? And I want to know what made them type Bitcoin into that search engine. So I asked them and a lot of them in Venezuela, especially it's wealth preservation. Someone just got paid. Like one lady was like, I just got paid today.

And I know that, you know, by the time they get paid next time, this money will be worth half as much. So you have to spend it all immediately before it comes in. She's, you want to, is there anything else I can do? What is this Bitcoin thing? If I buy it, I just hold on to it. I can't spend it. I can't buy diapers and milk for my baby next week. I'm like, no, you can get the Bitcoin. You can hold on to it. It is volatile. Yes. However, when you need Venezuela and Bolivar, you can just sell a little bit of that Bitcoin and you can get the cash. And when you tell them that, when you see the way out of Bitcoin, that's when normal, real people get excited because then there is real utility for this. And this is the biggest, best message I can give to all the crypto people listening right now. Forget about Bitcoin as an investment. Forget

about it as a speculative asset for rich kids to play with. Think of it as a means of exchange. Think of Bitcoin as a clearing layer, a magical people power clearing layer for all the world's money in whatever form it may be in. This is not how we were all sold the Bitcoin story in the beginning. But believe me when I tell you this is the killer app of Bitcoin. We don't need to be able to use Bitcoin to buy some coffee at Starbucks. We can use it to move money around the world and then people can buy the coffee with their own currency wherever they might be. Bitcoin will solve the problem of international settlements. This is what Ripple is trying to do. But we're doing it not just across the banking system, but literally across every financial network on the planet, because we can support every financial network on the planet. Only a people-powered marketplace can do that. Ultimately, Bitcoin is exactly what we need to complete the peer-to-peer

revolution that started with Craigslist, Airbnb, Uber, Udemy, and now there's Paxful building this people chain on top of the blockchain. This is what we need. Bitcoin started as peer-to-peer electronic cash. And that's how this story is going to end. When we forget all the buzzwords, DeFi is great, yes. But remember, we are in the people business. And peer-to-peer is how we are going to change the world. It is changing how the world

works every single day love it so to play devil's advocate even though it's not my belief where do stable coins fall into this because they can effectively do the same thing they can move with the same speed uh you know and they're very similar and they don't have the volatility where you risk you know your money being worth less when it arrives. Yeah, it's a great question. And the Bitcoin optimist in me is kind of crying. The maximalist is almost dead. Stablecoins do a better job of serving real use cases than Bitcoin does.

And that's the truth. This is a sensitive point. But for me, the reason I care about Bitcoin is because Bitcoin can help people if something else comes along that can help people better I'm going to be all about that because ultimately we're not in the money business we're in the people

business and that's what makes this work so yes Pax will be adding stable coins to our platform marketplace and wallet soon we should it should have happened a while ago actually but it's going to happen now because the people need it they've been asking for it and what we really need is a scalable uh stablecoin solution overall and ethereum is a great network but i believe it's got some issues handling all that well i mean it's you know it's a 1980s computer versus a new imac so yeah so we need to all our heads together to figure this out, guys.

And I'm always like, the best thing I can do, and thank you so much for giving me this platform to reach people, brother. I really appreciate it. You're asking amazing questions. The best thing I can do for this entire industry is really just to kind of beg you all for help, guys. I am shooting up the flare right in the air. Paxful needs the very best talent in the world to make this happen.

We cannot do this ourselves. We're 300 people right now. We're completely bootstrapped. That's why we can build schools in Africa and do all this crazy stuff that VCs wouldn't like. And we're going to keep going along that vector, but if you're an amazing product person, if you're an amazing business development person, if you love building communities, connecting with people and helping people, and most importantly, not asking for permission to solve the problems that you see, I promise you that every single line of code that you write, every single person that you talk to, every single lick of work that you do, you will get immediate feedback on it because it will be helping real people in real time.

None of it will go to waste. This, I promise you. I essentially want to quit everything I'm doing and come work for you. I'm kidding, man. It's very inspiring because it's just not what you hear generally in this community. You know, people view Bitcoin as a means to make more money. Yeah, which is fine. No, of course. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just I don't think they're getting the perspective of what you're seeing on the ground. Absolutely.

That's why we need this message to reach the hearts of the people out there, the real builders out there, all the amazing geniuses that we have running around. Can you imagine if you just got 1% of these Uber geniuses and got them with us on the ground, showed them what the problems are, had them building this? We'd move 10 times faster, brother. 10 times faster. Within five years, we'd be in the golden age. A golden age, a literal golden age in Africa. It would be the geopolitical achievement of the past and the last hundred years. This is possible. You know, what's striking me is that like we have all the talking heads.

I'm probably one of them. But like over here, the, you know, the mainstream media, at least in the crypto space. And we talk about the 2017 bubble and how that hurt retail. And it was like everybody, you know, had this terrible image of Bitcoin. And the biggest thing is it means we can't get mainstream adoption, right? Because people have this negative view of it. And we talk about mainstream adoption as this like unicorn, right? Like what would mainstream adoption be? And in the United States, mainstream adoption, when you talk about it, people are like, well, it means that like institutional investors are here and the banks care and Wall Street cares. And I'm realizing talking to you, that's not what

mainstream adoption is at all. Mainstream adoption is people using crypto and Bitcoin specifically to improve their lives. And that's not even a narrative, you know, here when we talk about mainstream adoption. I mean, what does mainstream adoption mean to you? And do you think we actually have found it to some degree? Just not here. Mainstream adoption to me is mama boga out in the boonies. That's a Kenyan term for like your mother out in the small villages in Kenya, right?

It's when Mama Boga can easily send money straight from her phone anywhere and do whatever she needs to do. That's what mainstream adoption looks like to me. When that happens, when you have all these young people and even their grandmothers able to send money, use money seamlessly, not just domestically, but internationally. When that happens, I promise you, here's what's going to happen. All those institutional investors, all that big money is going to say, hey, wait a minute, this Bitcoin thing is actually getting real use right now. It's not just a speculative asset. Then they're going to come in. But that is our path. And that's why it hasn't been done before, because everyone is chasing this pie in the sky, big money up here, these rich old men. But what about these 4 billion humans over here that have been desperate for any help whatsoever? If you've got the balls,

if you've got the thick skin, if you've got the heart to dive in and meet those people and work with them, I promise you it will be rough. It's been very rough for us here at PAX. We've had immense challenges, everything from KYC to fraud to AML to juggling regulations with Uncle Sam. As hard as that has all been, I have two Nigerian scam groups, one of them called the Black Axe. They actually want me dead. They have a hit out on me. This is the truth. So what? If you have the balls to suffer through this, I promise you, everything else will fall into place. This is something I tried to tell the Ethereum guys, like, hey, I know you want this big money, but let's forget about this. We could really use all the new brainiacs over here to help us out. Eventually, everyone's going to come.

I promise. Since you're cross-border, you're in every country, how do you navigate the regulation or do you see yourself sort of as a layer above it? But I mean, every single country has a different approach to cryptocurrency and to Bitcoin. And not only that, it seems like they can change on the flip of a hat. I mean, how many times have we seen like China embrace, ban, embrace, ban, India as well, Bitcoin. So how do you deal with all of that regulation operating in these different markets? Okay, so we're an American company, so our first concern is Uncle Sam. Which is like the worst place to have a crypto company. But the truth is, we will not be able to accomplish our mission

unless we're good with Uncle Sam. There's no way you define Uncle Sam and you're going to win unless you've got a couple of aircraft carriers. We don't. Fine. We're mature grownups here. We will juggle that. We will deal with that so we can connect the global north with the global south.

We can connect east and west. That's fine. We've accepted that. And from that, everything else builds from there. So regulation is not a concern for us. We're peer to peer. So, for example, we've applied us. We're peer-to-peer. So, for example, we've applied for all the states in the United States. Most of those states say,

you guys don't actually need a license based on your business model. We're federally licensed in the United States. We almost all have all of our state licenses that are offered to give us licenses. And we're willing to engage with the regulators in every single country in the world, and all of them now are ready to talk. But here's the thing. We don't need the licenses to operate, but our users do in some cases. And that's why we're applying for these licenses to protect our users. Because the truth is, you go talk to regulators in the emerging world, a lot of them are still trying to catch up to this Bitcoin thing.

And most of them have heard about Bitcoin because their people, their constituents are saying, hey, my uncle got scammed for his life in one coin. They're like, what is this Bitcoin? And then we're just trying to come in there and we're trying to educate them. This is what we're doing. We understand all this bad stuff that's happened. Absolutely. Yes, we should.

I always tell the African people and all people be very skeptical when you hear anything about crypto. It seems too good to be true. It is. You know, be skeptical. Skepticism keeps us alive. But ultimately, all we want to do is bring clarity to people. Because our vendors, our market makers, they don't want to defy the law. They don't want to skirt paying taxes. They're happy to do all that. They just want some clarity. We'll engage anyone solely for the purpose of bringing clarity to the scene. That will help things grow.

So to that end, like, what do you view as the biggest threats to Bitcoin, if any? Is it still governments? I mean, you know, is it a Trump tweet? Is it a China ban? You know, what are the biggest threats? What can make this not work? There's only two things that can make this not work. One is our, you know, and I'm just looking at us, meaning us in the crypto business, right? The infighting and fractionalization, the balkanization of the scene, this is number one threat. Imagine if all of us were working together, full momentum for, we would have, my goodness, we would be at a level now we can't keep it at night. We might have, my goodness, we would be at a different level now. We can't keep it at night. We might have flying cars by now.

So, of course, we're not going to get that. There's always going to be infighting. There's always going to be fractalization. The next big thing is just disdain or disinterest among all these, you know, super smart people. They all say, oh, I can make more money here with ICOs or now with DeFi or whatever the next thing comes up here. Yeah, bubbles. here with ICOs or now with DeFi or whatever the next thing comes up. No one wants to say, okay, let me step away from this and talk to these poor people over here. You know, look at my Twitter timeline.

There are people on there just busting me up all day, calling me a scammer because it's, if you're not, I tell people if you're not getting that kind of feedback in the, in the emerging world, then you're not doing the damn thing. We are going into a place that has been broken, and we are trying to give them the tools they need just to do business again. It's not easy, guys, but if we bear through it, if we bear through the disdain, and we aim our vision here, we will win. If we don't, and we're still chasing ghosts, that's going to cost us a lot of time. It's interesting that you identify sort of the biggest problem as tribalism, like within the crypto communities, you know, the Ethereum versus the Bitcoins versus the XRPs and, you know, the Link Marines or whoever it is.

Like everybody sort of either has their project and there are a lot of inherently young and I think angry people who just, you know, like to bust on others on the internet, which is a whole other aspect of it. But like, you're traveling in Africa where tribalism is real, right? So like, I guess, I'm trying to formulate the thought here. But like, you know, what sports team you follow tribalism, what religion you ascribe to is a form of tribalism. Your nationalism is a tribalism. And then you get to Africa where it's literally tribalism. How do you overcome that to actually get people to talk to each other and work together and to be on the same team? Because this is so important. That's super easy. Hey, guys, right here, you can start your own business. You can make money. You hardly need to show them they're going to make money.

Opportunity. You don't need to ask anyone for permission to build your own business here. You don't have to take your whole family and move to London. You don't have to get a special license. You don't have to do this. You just have to start. Learn about this. Move forward and start. That will get people working together. Look at Nigeria. Nigeria is like three or four different countries in one put together by the British. You've got the Fulani

Hossa in the north, you've got the Igbo in the southwest, you've got the Igbo in the southeast, right? They're the merchants and the really good hustlers. They all work together on Pax Wolf. They're all trading together. Tribalism means nothing there. It is solely for the purpose of improving their lives.

You show people a path forward and the right people will join you. And that's it. Tribalism in Africa is not a concern. When it comes to moving forward and building business and making money, the African people are absolutely ready to go. African people are super friendly. I invite anyone to join me in Rwanda. Rwanda is open for travel right now. If you want to come over there, I will personally be your host. I will show you our two schools in Bugisera District, our wells.

You'll absolutely love it. It's safe. It's clean. There's no corruption there. They have a great leader. And that's why we chose to build our first two schools in Rwanda. It's absolutely an amazing place. Okay, so why are you building schools and wells? Cause that's not, you know, that that's not a business pursuit. That's not part of,

I mean, it can be part of your mission, but it's certainly not for profit. So why are you doing that? It's a great question. And when I came up with this idea, everyone said I was crazy. My co-founder, Artur was like, all right, man, we'll go on the schools. We'll do it. We'll build the schools. No one knew why. No one really believed in the idea. I wasn't even sure why. I just knew that, you know, I built a school, we built a school in New Orleans, and it was a huge achievement that I shared with these five nuns, right? I felt so good. I felt part of something so much bigger than myself. And I saw in real time how the work that I did changed something,

changed an entire city. So from that, I said, Hey, I want to build some schools in Africa. I want to, I want to have a school there, like a school for gifted children. I want to be like the professor Xavier, crazy dream. It slapped me up the head and say, sit your ass down, man. You're not getting any money, but we didn't need their money. Thankfully, we're bootstrapped. So fast forward three years now, two years now since we built our first school. I will say we don't do much marketing and PR at Paxful, so it hasn't gotten us any big publicity or anything. But I will say this, and I hope all the crypto companies are listening to me right now, built with Bitcoin. Our initiative to build 100 schools and wells across Africa and the emerging world has paid for itself 10x over at least

in the amount of amazing talent it has brought us. It has brought us people that are not just here for money or a job. They don't need to work. They don't need money. Some of these people that have joined Paxful are independently wealthy. They don't need P work. They don't need money. Some of these people that have joined tax and are independently wealthy, they don't need any tax. Well, they're here because they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And Built With Bitcoin has shown the people that.

Built With Bitcoin has shown the African people that there's finally a group out there that actually gives a damn about them. You know, everyone, when they talk about Africa, they're like, yeah, we're gonna go in there and penetrate the market, we're gonna dominate. Like, it sounds like a rapist talking about his next victim. Yeah.

Colonialism. Yeah. Same old model. Exactly. And that's when people ask me, why is Paxful so big in Africa? What did you guys do? Definitely than everyone else.

I say, we're here to give, not take. That's it. We're here. Our mission, ultimately, at the end of it all, besides Bitcoin, besides technology, besides any of this, is to create wealth. To create wealth for the people that need it most. That is our mission.

And that is what people associate us with. And they trust us. Why? Because we are givers. We like to give. It feels good. And it's working. It's amazing. I don't know if any V. It feels good. And it's working. It's amazing.

I don't know if any VCs will buy that, but it's working. So the hell with that. VCs aren't notoriously the biggest givers. They like to show, you know, classic VCs like to show up when you've already done the job and take their piece because you're at the finish line and can't get across, right? So not exactly the ideal model for something like this. So how much does it cost to build a school in Rwanda? How do you do that? The first two schools we put together for about, we put in $200,000 worth of Bitcoin. And when we sold it on the ground, we got $250,000 worth of Rwandan francs out there. And so it worked out beautifully. And we paid all the workers in Rwandan francs. A lot of people say, you know, blockchain is going to change the whole face of charitable

giving. You can see in real time how the money's going and all this. I'm like, no, that's not true. I'm sorry to bust your bubble. Bitcoin doesn't actually fix everything, right? At the end of the day, it's about real human relationships and people that you can trust and they're going to be paid in local money. However, Bitcoin allowed us to build the schools and get a pretty nice arbitrage bonus on top of it. And these schools, we're not just building them and forgetting about them. We're always upgrading them and maintaining them. We got a year's worth of health insurance for the children.

We just added a clinic and sports field to the first campus. It's really like a campus. We're adding solar panels. We're adding tablets next year as well. We already have solar panels, but we're adding tablets next year as well. So it's an ongoing process. I see it as like a game of SimCity. You're just building up.

Right. But is it, is it like a, are you doing it through charitable donations or it's actually like it's a part of your business is that you, you know, you allocate funds to build these schools with the idea basically that you're going to raise talent locally and improve your business down the road. Or is it more just because you want to do the right thing? Well, we want to do the right thing, but it should always be sustainable, and it should always feed back into things.

That's just good business. You can never ignore that. You always must work towards that. So, look, the truth is we got very lucky. I met this dude on Instagram. His name was Yusuf Nasari. He ran something called Zamzam Water. And I saw one of his videos about this orphanage he built in Afghanistan.

It was so touching and beautiful. I donated, and I was in towards you. I never donated to charity. It was after New Orleans. I saw Salvation Army records. They didn't do anything, anything totally useless. So I'm not going to donate to these people.

They're just having fancy dinners and people, people aren't getting any of that money. But when I met this guy and I saw what he was doing and a hundred percent of everything you get, this guy, he put back into help. He never asked for a dime. This guy worked a part-time job just to be able to do ZAMZAM water.

So I said, hey, this is the guy. Can you help us build the school? And he said, yeah, I can help you build the school in Rwanda. And we chose Rwanda. We built the schools there. We made the donation to ZAMZAM water, which is a 501c3. You can donate to them as well. You can go to builtwithbitcoin.org and you can donate there

directly to them. Someone, he told me, someone sent him $10,000 worth of Bitcoin right out of the blue. He didn't even know who it was. And it's starting to happen now. I promise you guys, all of that money will go towards helping real people. I myself have made considerable personal donations. That's the built with Bitcoin initiative.

Built with Bitcoin, right? Yeah, just so clear. Everyone's calling me a philanthropist now. And it's a beautiful thing to be called, but I never saw myself as that. I was someone that would just never donate to charities. I was so fed up with it all. I didn't believe in it. But I do believe in this.

Because it is, we're built in schools. They're real. Interesting though. So you were on the ground, you said the red cross did jack shit, you know, the salvation army did nothing. So when you're an average person, cause that's, you see a global disaster and you want to make yourself feel a little better about it. And so you send the red cross $5 and you wipe your hands and you say that I'm a good person and I've done my duty right. But that you just said that that money is not getting there. So when there is a global disaster or something that somebody actually passionately wants to

help with, what is the best way to get your money to the people who need it? I have no answer there, honestly. The point is great. I mean, the Salvation Army, of course, I'm sure they do a lot of good. Just in my experience, I haven't seen it. I'm sure all these institutions, they do do good, right? They do touch people. But, you know, when 5% is what the people get, everything you put in, that's not satisfying.

I'm someone that's looking to make an epic win in anything that I do, whether it's for profit, not for profit, especially when it comes to helping people. And I expect the same from all of them. I haven't met an organization that matches up there, but like I said, I don't know that scene well at all.

I'm just on my own little patch of territory here. I know what I want. Someone wants to join me. Please come, please, please come. We need you. So now obviously like the last four, we have COVID, right?

And you even touched on you couldn't get to Africa. You're delayed. All these problems. I guess, how has that affected your business, if at all? And even a bigger question is that we get media about what's happening in the places that Americans care about. So we know the cases in each state. We might know the cases in another major country, but nobody hears about what's happening in Africa. So they don't.

And as far as COVID goes, I'm not sure either. I've heard things, but I know I'm not on the ground there right now. I'm sure people that are on the ground. But you're willing to be even at the risk of yeah oh absolutely absolutely yeah that's not going to stop me from going there as soon as you can get a plane right i'm going straight to rwanda from there probably kenya nigeria is going to take a little longer to open up south aqua's little iffy but they can't stop this guys whenever there's a golden age whenever humanity is about to embark on a golden age, you see things happen to stop it.

They're not going to be able to stop it this time. They're just trying to slow it down. But the cat's out of the bag, the genie's out of the bottle. There's no way this is going back. Once people see that the people next door can help them with their most pressing problems, and there are always problems with money why do we care about what some fat old man is saying often some faraway city no I can run my business now I can build my business I can you buy this I can do that why do I need why do I should why should I care

about this crap over here so it all starts with the money absolutely it all starts with the money absolutely look. I mean, it all starts with the money. Absolutely. Look, let's put that Christian guilt aside right now. And this is what I love about the African people. They're not shy about this. Jewish people aren't shy about this either. Islam promotes the use of money. We need to focus on the good here. God made us to be wealthy.

Let me say this again. Call me crazy. I believe in a world where everyone can be rich. The natural state of humans is prosperity. You look at the 13 colonies. These were a bunch of Englishmen that moved over and started building pig sheds and farms from nothing. Fast forward three years after that, they had the highest standards of living in the world. Yeah.

In a hostile new place. They were living better than a French nobleman. Why? Because they had their own system of money. It was honest money. Colonial script was not backed up by an ounce of silver or gold. It was backed up purely by the work of the people. And ultimately, that's the best thing Bitcoin has shown us.

That money is not gold or silver, certainly not paper. Money is work. And if you can work, you are wealthy. You have wealth. And there's so many young people out there ready, willing, and able to work. Wealth is our birthright. I can't even think of anything else to ask after that, to be honest, man. Where can everybody keep up with you? And I guess, you know, follow you after this, but even more importantly, how can they get involved? Beautiful.

So you can reach me, Ray Paxful, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Telegram as well. Ray at Paxful.com is my email. I invite everyone out there who loves building communities to join our Paxful peer program. You can go to our website and there'll be a link in the footer. We're going to add it all over the site as well. It's kind of, it's still in beta, but we have over a hundred peers around the world and they're absolutely amazing. Some peers have already joined Paxful for full time. This is our program to build full on communities, education and workshops to show people how

they can build their own businesses and solve their own problems all over the world. So I invite everyone to join the Paxful program. Go to paxful.com forward slash careers and apply directly for any open positions. We are always hungry for builders, builders, builders, builders, product people, especially if I'm a product guy, we're all product people here at Paxful. There's so very few product people in crypto. They're all here at Paxful. Ultimately, the biggest achievement I think we've done is we're building the best product

team in the world because that is what crypto needs to truly reach the masses. If you're a product person, please do come and join us. We absolutely need you. Everything that you do here, there's no other place in the world where you will have more impact on the lives of real humans. I promise you that. I'm telling you, I'm going to get my resume together after like 15 years. I'm going to go on the site and submit. And really, like, very inspiring. I think, you know, there's rare people in this world who just see things in a different manner, you know, and really get things done. And they're few and far between and clearly you're one of them. So man, I'm very, very impressed. And

to everyone who's listening, like we don't know each other. This is the first conversation. This is the first conversation we've ever had. So I got, I want you guys to know, I have no angle here. I just really like, I'm very inspired by the conversation that we just had. And I can tell you that I'm definitely going to be followed up with Ray after this to see how I can help. So thank you very much for the inspiration and for your time. Thank you, brother. It's been absolutely wonderful.

All right. And we'll do this again for sure. Let's go.