Ray Youssef on Paxful – the Safest P2P Marketplace to Buy & Sell Bitcoin (Episode 101)
Ray Youssef joins us to discuss why Paxful is the safest peer-to-peer marketplace to buy and sell bitcoin with 300+ payment methods.
Ray is the CEO and co-founder of Paxful, people-powered marketplace for money transfers with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Their mission is to empower the forgotten four billion unbanked and underbanked around the world to have control of their money using peer-to-peer transactions. The company, founded in 2015, has over 3 million customers globally who you can instantly buy and sell bitcoin with—using over 300 different payment methods. Aside from making bitcoin accessible, Ray also launched the #BuiltWithBitcoin charitable initiative that aims to show the humanitarian capabilities of bitcoin. He’s an NYC native and has been a serial entrepreneur since 2001.
*Disclaimer. None of this information is financial advice.
The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.
00:00:32:01 – 00:00:58:18
Richard Carthon: Hello everyone welcome to another episode of Crypto Current your host here Richard Carthon and today we’ve got a very special guest during the pre show we kind of just been chopping it up and he has an absolutely amazing story and a lot of great insights to give you on the impact that he is already doing on a global level. I’m really excited to unpack all this with Ray Youssef with paxful How are you doing today. Good
00:00:58:20 – 00:01:03:06
Ray Youssef: Good sir I’m very happy because you can see how you can call my afro down to this.
00:01:03:16 – 00:01:12:15
Richard Carthon: Oh yeah I really appreciate it man. Right now I think calling out of Estonia and I know you’ve got four offices all over the all over the world right now.
00:01:12:23 – 00:01:27:12
Richard Carthon: And yes we’re in Cove at times. But before we even just dive into this you say you know your company is growing at such a great rate that y’all are hiring right now which is amazing compared to where I know a lot of companies are absolutely doing the opposite Yeah.
00:01:27:15 – 00:01:40:22
Ray Youssef: Yeah. Well I think you know we’re doing better than ever right now. A peer to peer trading volume rose by 20 percent just from the last month alone sign ups are up by 3 percent. The rate is continued to grow all over peer to peer.
00:01:40:24 – 00:01:57:27
Richard Carthon: Yeah. Oh my goodness. That’s great problems. That’s great and amazing things that are in the pipeline for you all. But you know before we dive into this interview let’s get a little bit of background on yourself. Tell us a lot about you know who you are and and how you even got into the crypto space in the first place.
00:01:57:29 – 00:02:27:08
Ray Youssef: My name is Ray Yusef. As you know I’m I’m an immigrant person a Russian immigrant my friends came over from Africa to New York when I was 2 years old and we were in New York. And I got into computers when I was 19 years old and being an I just started trying to find a way to start my business on it right away. I bet the hustling gene the entrepreneurial gene almost entrepreneur had 13. I bet 11 shillings in a row and a total of 13 startups.
00:02:27:10 – 00:02:35:00
Ray Youssef: My actual is my lucky number 13. I’m right. Worst case he applied.
00:02:35:12 – 00:03:07:15
Ray Youssef: I learned a lot about Paxil for six years ago in New York City. I mean my co-founder actually opens with us. How how hard it was just the beginning. We didn’t know exactly what was going on. You know what was going on period. One thing that we did do that no one else has been able to do seemingly in the spaces we stay connected to the streets. All you’ve looked at crypto Twitter and you look at what’s happening in the real world with bitcoin so completely different story. Right. People have problems out there and we figured out what those problems are as we listen to our users and particularly our users.
00:03:07:17 – 00:03:14:13
Ray Youssef: What snafus taught us everything we know about bitcoin and what its killer app actually is. I’m here to share everything.
00:03:14:27 – 00:03:25:21
Richard Carthon: Amazing. Well let’s start from the beginning then what was your first introduction to crypto. What year was it. How do you learn about it and what inspired you to like want to potentially pursue a career in it.
00:03:27:01 – 00:03:45:02
Ray Youssef: I think I heard about as early as 2011 I just dismissed it as nerd money and then wasn’t 13. I went to my first bitcoin meetup and that’s where I met our tour ShoreBank. He was now my co-founder and best friend were you know kind of married like co-founders usually are. Yeah.
00:03:45:06 – 00:04:14:24
Ray Youssef: Well baby right. And I met him at the first bitcoin meetup I went to at the bitcoin center in New York City and we became fast friends. We decided to start something it didn’t work. It was a retail merchant for us and there was no bitcoin around. So it makes sense and got that you know they’re going to get guys is selling hotdogs and beer in New York to accept bitcoin. It’s too early way too early. So we said hey there’s not a bitcoin in people’s hands let’s find a way to solve that. You know I bought my first bitcoin on Coinbase actually
00:04:16:16 – 00:04:22:18
Ray Youssef: it was a dollars I’m not a mogul I understand.
00:04:23:22 – 00:04:40:04
Ray Youssef: And then you know getting Bitcoin is extremely difficult. You know we we had our first real life. We were homeless for a little while. I was surfing couches I was actually physically homeless for a little while and though some were building Paxil we’re trying to find a use case we’re trying to find something that would make it stick. Those
00:04:40:06 – 00:04:44:02
Ray Youssef: Those people are coming to us buying Bitcoin for all kinds of things weren’t sure why they were buying it.
00:04:44:04 – 00:04:48:03
Ray Youssef: Then one day I got a phone call this lady in Louisiana
00:04:50:04 – 00:05:18:08
Ray Youssef: in the morning in New York City Mayor Michael Flynn were crashing at the cause of the culture that we were renting. And we were working. And this lady calls me up and yelling on the phone. How did you get my number. Who are you. This Web site Web site what Web site. My tax bill. And she’d like to know what the website is it’s a back and forth for you actually told me that I remembered Lippman phone number on the Web site cool bitcoin.
00:05:18:11 – 00:05:22:08
Ray Youssef: She started screaming she’s down to her last 13 dollars and she need this.
00:05:22:10 – 00:05:27:24
Ray Youssef: She called it baby Con. Teach me how to pronounce it.
00:05:28:06 – 00:06:00:26
Ray Youssef: So months of taking calls like this from the all these people we’re not technical mainstream people all they wanted to do was to get some bitcoin post up an add on this classified ad site that lost her visa and MasterCard merchant account and every call I got was the same. They were angry they were confused. It’s been eight hours surfing the Internet. They could not get any bitcoin. They were just like disgusted and pissed off. But I want each and every single one of those people that called through on the phone to buying their first bitcoin and actually using their office bitcoin.
00:06:00:28 – 00:06:12:14
Ray Youssef: They taught me a lot about how to actually build for people. So building for people is a practical second virtue. First reduce the stigma in the streets. And I want to give you guys a little insight into that
00:06:13:09 – 00:06:45:04
Ray Youssef: Particular episode and that is what the got actual started on gift cards because I was trying to figure out how to onboard this woman. How did you buy stuff from the classified ad site before. If you don’t have a bank account you know the bank you know I know the 40 million Americans that don’t have a bank’s was like a white lady from the South did not have a bank. Never had a bank account didn’t want a bank account. So I told OK. How did you pay for before online you know I bought a one vanilla piece apart gift card from the drugstore.
00:06:45:22 – 00:07:17:29
Ray Youssef: Was like really OK. What other gift cards are available. She told me. Is it OK to go by anyone’s gift cards in the last 13 dollars by 10 about and then I find people on Paxil that can take the gift cards and sell and give them bitcoin and for only like this lady only wanted like 10 bucks is like. That’s a huge pain in the ass for him accepts a small cards. He said you had to charge to hard my high margin was shooting care but she just needed two bucks with a big right. So that was the case with the price was very high but these people had no other options.
00:07:18:01 – 00:07:32:25
Ray Youssef: You can not if you don’t have a bank account you’re not getting bitcoins at Coinbase. Now I want you to use any way. So through that whole scenario we’ve figured out that gift cards are actually the best way to onboard people in emerging markets or the unbanked in development.
00:07:33:23 – 00:08:01:00
Richard Carthon: That’s from their not and that’s your point. The second or third person has told me about like the power of gift cards and how just in a way it’s in a way to onboard people who don’t have access to bank accounts but also you need that electronic piece to at least have the cash on deck to then insert into the electronic payment system or what have you of of what that bank would need to get that initial money exactly.
00:08:01:02 – 00:08:33:21
Ray Youssef: It’s like it’s like it’s gift cards our digital asset. Yeah. Well what Bitcoin can do in the realm of peer to peer finance people power market is like banks where they can convert any of that into bitcoin right into other forms of money right. That’s what happens actual peer to peer finance. Bitcoin’s killer app is as a universal translator of money and that’s really how practical function to peer to peer trades. You can turn anything into bitcoin and bitcoin into anything else meaning you can turn anything into anything if we just get abstract.
00:08:33:23 – 00:08:51:12
Ray Youssef: The Bitcoin part is automated to peer to peer trades for you. You have people that our network they can literally convert anything into anything else anywhere in the world almost instantly depending on the mutations. Is that not the greatest invention the history at least in the past hundred years.
00:08:51:23 – 00:09:23:16
Richard Carthon: Zakaria It’s an extremely luxury but up ultimate it’s all media as well as the way out there and it’s that the challenge has been and what I’ve spoken with on a lot of people who have come and interviewed on this is finding the use case for the everyday person right. So how do we get to mass adoption how do we get to people who have heard of it but like I don’t want to deal with this right now how do we make it to where any anyone anywhere can quickly use this understand it and have a marketplace to use it. It sounds like that’s what Paxil is and what it’s done.
00:09:23:18 – 00:09:32:22
Richard Carthon: So now if you don’t mind you just spend some time unpacking like you know what is Paxil where you presently add in like where you are growing as a company.
00:09:32:25 – 00:09:48:14
Ray Youssef: OK. Sure. So Paxil is found in 2015. Me mean Arturo. I’m a New Yorker our tour is now a New Yorker piece certainly from Estonia. So our first job in New York. But then we had to go back to we had to go to Estonia to find out cheaply it was then the bit license also passed.
00:09:48:16 – 00:09:59:01
Ray Youssef: We kind of had to leave. Now we’re working we’re applying for a bit license but our world is funny right. So we’re 50 people right now around the world the total size of parks.
00:09:59:03 – 00:10:13:00
Ray Youssef: We never took a dime for a venture capitalist or anything we’re totally bootstrapped. Thank God for that. And Axel has figured out a few things. So first of all what actual is is a people powered Marketplace Money transfer or anyone anywhere at any time.
00:10:13:02 – 00:10:29:09
Ray Youssef: Borderless. We have three goals. One is stay connected to the streets right. That’s how you learn. That’s where you grow. That’s you get traction. So you keep offering value for people you must listen to people. You can’t just see people as numbers or users. They’re your community.
00:10:29:11 – 00:11:00:00
Ray Youssef: And you learn from them. They help you. They teach you about what your product can actually do which the Afghan people are definitely taught us. And the second is to build for people. And that’s a big thing that those missing. There’s not any product people think just the beauty the technology and the elegance of the code and the curve of the elliptical. It’s all a that no one cares about that you have to build for human beings not axels on an abstract thing it’s a tool that real humans use every single day. That’s what Bitcoin is I thought that’s what bitcoin was here to do in the beginning and I still believe that.
00:11:00:02 – 00:11:02:23
Ray Youssef: But looking at Twitter it doesn’t seem that way.
00:11:02:25 – 00:11:33:00
Ray Youssef: So Bill for people when I’m building for other robots we’re building for human beings our third value is to be heroic to do heroic things right. But we are living in. I don’t think people I mean of course we’re still in a lockdown. People realize stuff is going on in the world but we’re living in truly epic times and with flu you know some politician somewhere or banker can click a few buttons and you can see a massive run on any kind of economies currency you look at Venezuela or Argentina Nigeria.
00:11:33:02 – 00:11:47:01
Ray Youssef: The past eight weeks has seen its currency devastated. Whenever that happens people need help. Look imagine losing your life savings in a week your family spent generations building up exactly what doesn’t make that make that point a gangs. I
00:11:47:03 – 00:12:09:16
Richard Carthon: I want this to hit home for people I think in an age in the US we don’t really see that yes like in the marketplace when all this first started happening and the down everything else went down and yes people lost 20 percent. People are losing their entire life savings and a week or two. Exactly. Yeah I had to read stress like. How you just. And people are being impacted by this right now.
00:12:12:03 – 00:12:30:00
Ray Youssef: Hasn’t that happened to you. Your neighbor everyone else around you that you all become poor like almost to me like a boy. It’s it’s it’s really like demonic honestly. So we if we can come to the aid of those people we are literally doing God’s work we’re heroes. And this is an age where heroes are needed.
00:12:30:27 – 00:13:04:15
Ray Youssef: Every single time they look at Lebanon they got hit by a deflationary attack and now look at their economy people are burning banks over there. And that can happen anywhere in the world right now especially as we go further and further into this. I think we’re entering a golden age. And whenever a golden manatee is about to embark upon a golden age things pop up to slow us down right or try to slow us down this time. You know they’re going to play their games but Miami is going to have this golden age. But there are certain growing pains we must go through. So there’s gonna be a lot of room for heroism. Now those are the three values of Paxil as far as what Paxil like really is.
00:13:04:17 – 00:13:35:14
Ray Youssef: It’s it’s an awesome team against the biggest hearted team in the world and it’s very very young team. But we’re like family here we’re really trying to save the world with this crazy mission. You know we went to Africa four years ago and I really got is like I these people are ready to move forward like I’ve never seen these people are brilliant the entrepreneurs there are they’re young they’re ambitious they’re brilliant and they’re ready to move but they don’t care about the past. They’re not blaming anyone from everything. Africans don’t have a victim mindset. They just want to build.
00:13:35:16 – 00:13:38:27
Ray Youssef: They just want to move forward. And when you see them like wow what are they missing.
00:13:40:08 – 00:14:10:26
Ray Youssef: I mean OK so the Africans are not. This is the thing you know when we went to Africa for years it was like all those people are going to buy bitcoin you’re crazy boy really making two lives a day boy and I’m going to buy no bitcoin and still fight the year and three will still get my way. Like all right fine. But when I saw the problems that they had with money over there and it’s not that they lack money there’s a lot of money in Africa leave. There are billionaires over there. The country has a lot of wealth. People can’t use it. The money is really trapped in the prison of its own country in fact.
00:14:11:08 – 00:14:42:16
Ray Youssef: If you’re like Nigeria it’s hard just to send money to the country next door like keep sending in or you know if you’re in South Africa it’s hard to send money to Malawi. It’s almost a it’s almost impossible not to send money to the country next door. Right. Using a bank it’s a nightmare. Even using wallets like M peso you think it would solve all the problems that spaces available in seven countries out of 54 of Africa. But then from NPC Kenya the pace of Ghana or in places of South Africa through they don’t know they don’t talk to each other.
00:14:42:18 – 00:14:48:20
Richard Carthon: There’s no back and forth. A blizzard like seven different networks on the watch.
00:14:48:22 – 00:15:19:04
Ray Youssef: Why don’t you think there’s all these reasons behind that. That said from regulation and this and that. But when you when you see how deep the problems are I’ll give you another example if you’re in Nigeria and you have money in the bank then you have a lot of money the bank would give you a debit card over there the limit you to a hundred dollars a month you can spend your debit card online. No what. Well yeah there’s some banks just recently raise it to a thousand but even that’s still a thousand bucks a month. That’s it.
00:15:20:03 – 00:15:23:24
Ray Youssef: Now if you have your bank account of their dollars you can go very high.
00:15:23:26 – 00:15:40:27
Ray Youssef: But if you having the local currency you put all these restrictions on the people because they don’t want to cover the value of the currency to go down the central bank. The government wants to buy all the stuff they want to buy with their foreign money. They don’t want to lose their foreign money. They’re buying guns or tanks or medical stuff.
00:15:40:29 – 00:15:47:14
Richard Carthon: They’re basically essentially locking up their money so they have to print more to cause inflation to try to drive up value.
00:15:47:16 – 00:16:15:12
Ray Youssef: Yeah yeah yeah that’s the worst photograph but it gets worse so it gets worse not bad. Like when I went there and I saw that there’s there’s like no there’s 14 countries in Africa that are basically under the rule of they’re still colonies of the French because the African Franc is about as African as the Federal Reserve is federal. It’s literally printed in Paris central grounds.
00:16:15:14 – 00:16:28:20
Ray Youssef: They pay for. They pay for the printing. They pay for the right to have their own money created for them all their leaders bank accounts are in Paris. Anyway I read the whole thing. The biggest scam ever and it’s still going on to this day. Yeah
00:16:29:11 – 00:16:54:02
Richard Carthon: As wild. So with with all of that going on in like once you discovered all of this just I wouldn’t say corruption but just like interesting ways of how they have to deal with their governments and money transfers. How are you. How were you able to like taking this information and then give them the power of of financial freedom.
00:16:55:09 – 00:17:04:05
Ray Youssef: So if you give them a tool they can let them access any financial network in the world that’s powerful. So give me some examples. When the Nigerian Central Bank of
00:17:05:23 – 00:17:39:10
Ray Youssef: three and a half years ago when they they said hey we’re not going to let people send money out of the country is yours a dollars anymore. They want to hold onto their own money. Is that a you drive inflation up to 27 percent. So when we did that all the entrepreneurs that were say buying cars in America and Europe and shipping them over to Lagos and making a hefty profit anywhere from 55 percent to I think 300 or 400 percent they were buying used cars so they couldn’t do that in movies you couldn’t send money to bank would let them send Nigeria out as dollars to the United States said no that’s cut.
00:17:39:12 – 00:17:49:20
Ray Youssef: So then you know I’m online all the time talking to people and people are coming on I’m CEO by the support of nearly every day. I was talking to someone about this I want to see what’s going on in the streets right now.
00:17:49:22 – 00:17:57:06
Ray Youssef: And I talked to these guys and they told me their story I’m like All right you know how much is the car said oh it’s nine thousand dollars.
00:17:57:08 – 00:18:04:10
Ray Youssef: So it’s a landrover the first guy so I can do this. And he said OK I’ll buy the Mannheim auction house in Detroit.
00:18:04:12 – 00:18:35:04
Ray Youssef: All right get nine thousand bucks with a bitcoin or you get nine thousand bucks from the Bitcoin or even a little less whatever it’s fine. And I’m going to find you a guy in the United States that will let you use his bank account to make the payment for you. He’s like why would anyone do that. As a Jew and giving Bitcoin. So you’re going to give me send money for me if I give him back I’m like Yeah. Given how he asked all these questions they told me get the bitcoin combined with a bank transfer or anything else in Nigeria we actually had the quantity there and I explained him how the escrow worked.
00:18:35:16 – 00:19:09:10
Ray Youssef: I said Here is an offer here’s a link I do in California will wire the money is it’s bank of America something in the same bank or whatever so it can just happen on the same day. He didn’t believe it. I walk them through the whole thing. I want to see this was actually going to work for this guy. What would happen if he had that aha moment that he certainly did it where they got the money. He couldn’t believe it. And then he even I had the same guy who sold him more bitcoin so he could pay the shipping to do the shipping for him as well as shipping built for him as well the guy was happy to do it and he paid market rate for that bitcoin.
00:19:09:12 – 00:19:16:20
Ray Youssef: Right. And the guy was happy to get Mark rapes back then you had to pay a lot. He wanted 3 percent to get bitcoins we got a great price.
00:19:16:27 – 00:20:04:06
Ray Youssef: And the guy basically he bought the bitcoin. He sold it. He didn’t pay a fee from the United States at all. And it happened nearly. This Nigerian business dude was like he couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t believe it. He didn’t actually believe it until you got the shipping papers. The car was being shipped over. He called me and said well wow this is amazing. This is really going to work. And then when the guy actually got the car over there like he scaled up the whole thing to a crazy love he actually saw that the whole thing would work and he started telling all of his friends and this is one of the ways that Paxil got started in Nigeria it was we talked to real people and figure out what problems are like OK the tools that we have with this peer to peer electronic cash we called Bitcoin and this human layer that we have as actual peers.
00:20:04:08 – 00:20:17:23
Ray Youssef: And you know this whole idea of sharing the sharing economy what can we do to help this person. We had just what he needed we had a universal translator money Bitcoin that’s empowered through possible people powered marketplace it works.
00:20:17:25 – 00:20:47:22
Ray Youssef: It can do solve nearly any problem you have with one which is amazing and you went in first and you went to identify a problem and you said here’s how we can fix it and here’s using using technology that’s already that world will do all the complex layers. But here’s how you can go and use our interface and solve this. So since then like having that aha moment I think you said there are over three hundred ways that people can interact in like two different trying to trends transactions on your platform to get a thing done.
00:20:47:24 – 00:20:49:17
Richard Carthon: Can you speak a little bit more on that real quick
00:20:51:09 – 00:20:55:11
Ray Youssef: yes we have 360 pain another others maybe more right now.
00:20:55:22 – 00:21:22:08
Ray Youssef: And gift cards with hundreds of gift cards or maybe under 70 gift cards and support on there there’s bank transfers. There’s online wallets all the online wallets of the world. You know guys like. Seventeen hundred online wallets or something. And then there’s cash then there’s goods and assets which is something we just added I bought my I bought someone with my wife a little red Mini Cooper tax.
00:21:22:10 – 00:21:54:17
Ray Youssef: A call from my friends in Berlin. We sell cars. So we’ll help. There’s also gold you can buy gold and silver and diamonds up taxable as well. So those are our major payment method groups. And go again. You can also add a payment method as well. So you know as I talk and I give these examples please you know keep this all in mind and keep in mind I need the payment that that you use. We can actually add those attacks and we can build more corridors that make sense along payment methods it makes sense sort of matching corridors like China to Nigeria with a use case you know.
00:21:54:19 – 00:22:02:08
Ray Youssef: And you know right. Right. Market and then you have some magic going you start a business that way.
00:22:02:10 – 00:22:11:24
Ray Youssef: Yes people are doing right. I mean I was in South Africa I met this one guy who started his own version of Western Union in South Africa using possible Bitcoin.
00:22:12:00 – 00:22:29:22
Ray Youssef: You found the first thing you did. This is the formula for every entrepreneur Bitcoin people especially when you product like minded people in the space not just you know eggheads. No guns are cool I’m a nerd but there’s another level right. You got to find a problem first. That’s number one. So this guy found a problem.
00:22:29:27 – 00:22:43:25
Ray Youssef: Nigerian workers living in South Africa that don’t have bank accounts get paid in cash and want to send money back home. Seen as a pain for them they don’t like going. There was a mother has to wait two days go on a super long line you want to see the western union lobbyists is cool right.
00:22:43:29 – 00:22:46:13
Ray Youssef: So it’s a challenge. So
00:22:46:15 – 00:22:57:17
Ray Youssef: So she has to do all that and they’re like OK. That’s what they’ve been doing this one guy and one of our actually users in South Africa said hey guys you’re paying about 20 percent 15 percent or so of this money back home. It takes two days.
00:22:57:19 – 00:23:28:27
Ray Youssef: How about you just deposit the South African rand you have this cash into my South African bank account and give me your mother’s bank account in Nigeria and I’ll make sure she gets the money the same day. And we’ll be instant no charge you 7 percent fee. So he took their money and he turned into bitcoin and then he took that bitcoin and sold it to someone he knew in Nigeria gave the guy his mother’s other guy’s mother’s bank account number and that’s on the money. So he made a profit every step of the way. He made a profit on exchange rate for their cash into bitcoin.
00:23:28:29 – 00:23:56:07
Ray Youssef: He also made a profit on the exchange rate of Bitcoin. Scenario was in Nigeria you’ll pay a few percentage points extra. Right. And he still managed to charge him less than half more than half of what they were paying for Western brilliant. How many such other examples exist. This is example of remittance as a use case but there’s payments e-commerce you know there’s wealth preservation is money and then there’s social justice as well which we can definitely talk about later.
00:23:56:09 – 00:24:10:12
Richard Carthon: Yeah. Actually we pay into that right now just because there’s a ton of use cases that keep going through my head and just there’s so many practical ways that you can solve problems right now using a tool like this.
00:24:10:14 – 00:24:30:12
Richard Carthon: So I want to to speak to and I would like you to speak to like what are some of the social justice ways Pax was been able to affect a lot of people a lot of the different customers that you have yes it’s called built with bitcoin built a Bitcoin is a mission a dream that my co-founder had a while ago and it started
00:24:32:03 – 00:25:09:05
Ray Youssef: a while ago in New Orleans actually but what it’s turned into is three schools out of 100 that we want to build. We’ve already built three of them. Our mission is to build 300 schools in Africa and the emerging world as well. We’re not gonna ignore and forget about our brothers to Africa etc. But I’m asking myself or their grandparents. So I do have a soft spot for Africa. Built with bitcoins for the entire world built with bitcoin it comes as many things that we really thought about it and said hey what do people need to really like take it to the next level is when you go and you see the African people in Rwanda that’s saying who was our village.
00:25:09:07 – 00:25:20:04
Ray Youssef: That’s where the genocide first started. That’s where we chose to build our first two schools. It’s a beautiful compound. So three school buildings it’s water wells water distribution water filtration water storage. We give them
00:25:21:23 – 00:25:55:00
Ray Youssef: school uniforms we even pay for their health insurance for a year. We educate the teachers full classrooms and put up a clinic. Just recently we’re always continuing to maintain and operate the schools. So about 400 children ages babies 12 years old go to that school. And we’re very proud of that because we’re turning each of these schools into a kind of project based on both. So we’re always giving the upside of solar panels. No we’re going to bring them laptops and iPods eventually solar panels up to more and more of them to support that.
00:25:55:02 – 00:26:16:21
Ray Youssef: But this is kind of something I always wanted to do. I started New Orleans. I went there right after Hurricane Katrina. And it was open. Long story short it was three weeks there was a real adventure. I met these five nuns and we helped rebuild the first school to reopen in working in New Orleans after Katrina which which was school.
00:26:16:23 – 00:26:18:27
Richard Carthon: I lived out in New Orleans for eight years.
00:26:18:29 – 00:26:27:13
Ray Youssef: It was the New Orleans Cathedral Academy right in the French Quarter. Yeah. OK. Well hi mary rose again. I was with
00:26:29:05 – 00:26:33:14
Ray Youssef: the nuns and I met friends along the way that this trucker who really helped me.
00:26:33:17 – 00:26:49:04
Ray Youssef: We managed to actually not raid but we found the low res. We found a Lowe’s hardware store and it was full of hope. And you know we were asking there wasn’t open but we asked to do it told to do their story. We need some supplies. We’re trying to rebuild a school with a bunch of nuns.
00:26:49:11 – 00:26:51:09
Ray Youssef: You know
00:26:53:03 – 00:26:57:13
Ray Youssef: did whatever you want. It was like something from the 80s.
00:26:57:15 – 00:27:13:06
Ray Youssef: Anyway That experience showed me the power of education really like the city could come back with the police and fire department come back. We weren’t going to come back if we couldn’t put the kids to school anyway so the whole idea really came from but it’s something that’s grown bigger than our imagination.
00:27:13:08 – 00:27:34:07
Ray Youssef: And I would encourage every company out there every fintech company every crypto company built a bitcoin isn’t just axles an it’s something that we started but should be for the whole community because I know you don’t want to give up your hard earned profits build schools. I know it’s hard to justify that your investors actually didn’t have any investors. We could do a lot more easily.
00:27:34:12 – 00:27:40:12
Ray Youssef: But I will include you all of you guys out there and that includes C.C. Jesse the whole gang. Arthur Hayes too.
00:27:40:14 – 00:27:44:07
Ray Youssef: Yeah bro who actually helped build the school.
00:27:44:09 – 00:28:03:06
Ray Youssef: I promise you you will get back 10 acts whatever you put in there and love from the community and H.R. actuals team is amazing because we don’t get people here that just want money get people that want to make a change they want to change world and say hey these guys are building schools for no good reason except they want to build schools and help people.
00:28:03:10 – 00:28:10:06
Ray Youssef: We have the best and you’ll get the best. I highly encourage you try and go to the bitcoin light side. It’s good.
00:28:10:12 – 00:28:34:28
Richard Carthon: That’s excellent and definite going to try to shed some light on that. Give me some more information on that and I’ll make sure that people in the crypto current community can can look into that and find more ways to please some impact as well. But Ray when you have dropped all kinds of knowledge has been an absolutely fun and enjoyable conversation but what is a final thought that you want to leave with all of our listeners here today
00:28:37:21 – 00:28:39:08
Ray Youssef: stay positive guys. We
00:28:39:10 – 00:29:06:22
Ray Youssef: We are entering into a golden age right now. We really are. It might not seem like it. Things are not very fine right now. The earth is kind of half close business but we are truly entering into a golden age and I feel like every where in my body Africa will be the world’s first crypto continent. People after this long time ago and still a lot of people in crypto we call them one money is going to come from the big institutional investor and now it’s come from the people it’s going to come from the people that need it most.
00:29:06:24 – 00:29:08:07
Ray Youssef: We have a lot of work to do.
00:29:08:09 – 00:29:39:15
Ray Youssef: So I am officially shooting out a flare here into the sky. Need help. Actual needs you. We need builders people that love building products for human beings for people. Please join us. We need you so badly right now. We shouldn’t. We need like at least 7 more awesome product teams we have all the ideas and not coming from our heads are coming straight from the people the people are telling us what they need. We don’t have enough hands to build them quickly enough. Join us if you want to make a huge change in what you want to feel like a hero every single day.
00:29:39:17 – 00:29:45:22
Ray Youssef: And you want to get to read feedback directly from the people seeing all the awesome stuff that you’re doing right here.
00:29:45:24 – 00:29:53:03
Ray Youssef: This is the greatest company in the world. For that reason we listen to all of our users and be mobilized to help them. Every single time.
00:29:54:02 – 00:29:56:15
Richard Carthon: Excellent excellent.
00:29:56:18 – 00:30:01:04
Richard Carthon: Well what are some different ways that people can either connect with you are going learn more about Paxil
00:30:02:15 – 00:30:28:00
Ray Youssef: with paxful.com/careers they can read up about actual careers right there I’m rape actually on Twitter you can find that telegram as well I’m everywhere pretty much rare actually bar com is my email and I’ll get in touch with me I want to hear what you guys think feel especially if you have ideas about product or use cases or people to help. I want to know I’m not one of those snooty CEOs and a normal guy and I love talking to people I love learning. I truly do these reach out.
00:30:29:04 – 00:30:33:23
Richard Carthon: Excellent. Well again I really appreciate you being on the show today and for everyone listening. Stay Crypto Current
Crypto Current will be guiding all of you who are new to the cryptocurrency world to becoming a cryptocurrency and blockchain expert. Crypto Current was founded to give access to information to everyone on current events occurring in cryptocurrency and blockchain in a digestible way. Since its creation, we have created content that impacted thousands of people through its podcast, blog, and social media.