NoOnes: The P2P Super App Empowering the Global South with Bitcoin

Since its founding two years ago, NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, has achieved a lot in a short space of time.

Ray Youssef, co-founder and CEO at NoOnes, spoke with CoinJournal about NoOnes vision and how it and Bitcoin are empowering the Global South. Youssef dives into the challenges they face, a financial apartheid in Africa, political pressures from the West, the limitless opportunities for the Global South, and how the relationship between crypto and people is evolving.

In this exclusive interview, Rebecca Campbell, crypto content editor at CoinJournal, spoke with Ray Youssef, co-founder and CEO at NoOnes, to discuss NoOnes vision and how it and Bitcoin are empowering the Global South.

RC: Can you tell me about NoOnes and where the name came from?

RY: NoOnes is a super app for the Global South. We started as a peer-to-peer crypto marketplace, but we always planned on being much more than that. In less than two years we’ve added a spot exchange and a virtual VISA card, and we’re about to launch our NoOnes gift card. We’re also a messenger app and you can even top-up your mobile phone. NoOnes is built for the people of the Global South, so we don’t have the problems of a US-based business trying to serve people in the Global South.

The way NoOnes got its name is a funny story. When NoOnes was just a dream, a series of brainstorming sessions with the guys who helped get it started, I’d been having these random thoughts about our family dog who had died about 15 years before. Her name was Heidie, but my mother gave her a nickname – Noons.

I loved that dog and for some reason, she was constantly in my thoughts around that time, so one day as a joke I said, “We should call the company Noons.” I wrote it down on a piece of paper and saw that it read like NoOnes, and I thought it was perfect. It captures the truth about what we wanted to do with a decentralized marketplace. Your money is NoOnes business. Your data is NoOnes business. Your business is NoOnes business.

RC: What are your vision and goals with NoOnes?

RY: Ever since I realized the power of crypto and peer-to-peer, my vision and goals haven’t changed. There are a lot of people in crypto who want to get rich, but that’s never really motivated me. I saw crypto as a leveler, an equalizer. And I saw how it could make a difference to people constantly left behind by the financial system because their money is the wrong color or their passport is the wrong type.

As soon as I saw the potential of crypto and peer-to-peer working together to create this eco-system that enables any form of money to become another form of money, I knew it was a mechanism that could end financial apartheid. I call it financial apartheid because that’s what the international financial system is – it discriminates against people because of who they are and where they come from. I’ve known that for a long time. With NoOnes, we can change that because we are based in the Global South and tailor our products to suit the people who need them most.

My vision is to see hundreds of cities like Dubai all over the Global South, with people trading freely, building wealth and making their lives and their family’s lives better.

RC: Can you talk about the role NoOnes and Bitcoin will play in empowering the Global South?

RY: First of all, we are based here. That means we have boots on the ground and can talk to the people who use our marketplace to buy crypto, trade gift cards, make payments, remittances, whatever. Our products are not based on a Western model and then forced on people because they have no other option.

Take KYC, for example. When I was in the US, we often had to file a suspicious activity report and lock a Global South customer’s funds when, for whatever reason, they were flagged on the system. Then we had to wait until the American regulators got back to us to say, “Ok, you can let these guys go.” Sometimes, we had to wait years until we could release a customer’s funds.

Meanwhile, these people, who did nothing wrong, had to wait until the regulator said they could access their own money. In the meantime, they had to find money from somewhere else to cover what the regulators locked away. Even the banks can’t do that, but Uncle Sam can. It was crazy. Why should we put our customers through that kind of pain?

The US still controls Africa to such an extent that it’s difficult for countries to trade with each other. That’s part of the financial apartheid I talk about. Look what happened recently with Binance. A new CEO comes in and the first thing they do is disable Pan-African trade on Binance peer-to-peer. Kenyans can only trade with Kenyans and Ghanaians can only trade with Ghanaians

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