Since its founding two years ago, NoOnes, a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, has achieved a lot in a short space of time. As a visionary entrepreneur, Ray Youssef, NoOnes CEO, is helping lead the way in the evolving world of crypto. Using Bitcoin as a tool, Youssef and his team believe it’ll bring empowerment to the Global South.
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. 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.
Rebecca Campbell (RC): Can you tell me about NoOnes and where the name came from?
Ray Youssef (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…