Bringing the crypto payments ecosystem around the world Ray Youssef

Though he has had 11 business failures, today Ray Youssef is building Bitcoin-funded schools across Africa as executive director of the Built With Bitcoin Foundation and is helping millions of people buy and sell cryptocurrency as CEO of Paxful. However, Youssef also admits to looting hardware stores on behalf of a convent school after Hurricane Katrina and says he was nearly shot as a suspected CIA agent during the Egyptian Revolution. He has just returned from El Salvador, where he spent time at  Bitcoin Beach — where he says even children are using Bitcoin ( BTC ). Crypto payments services are important there because  70% of people in El Salvador have no bank account. For Youssef, peer-to-peer financial networks spell hope for the developing world. When Youssef first heard about Bitcoin in 2011, he quickly “dismissed it as nerd money.” He had more pressing things on his mind, as that year he left the relative comfort of New York to support the revolution in his native Egypt. There, he went to the core of the protests at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and “nearly died on the first night of really crazy fighting” during which he was arrested by the military as a suspected CIA agent. “I could write a book on that one night alone,” he concluded with a laugh that exuded mystery. He’s not the first crypto leader to throw themself into a revolution — like Griff Green, who once protected polling booths in Catalonia , or Amir Taaki, who went to fight with the Kurdish YPG. After he returned home to the United States, however, he began integrating his experiences of the revolution and questioning many things about society. One of the rabbit holes he descended was that of money. “I started asking questions about money: Where is it? Where does it come from?” he said. Soon, he “began to see history through a very different lens.” That’s when he returned to Bitcoin, where he felt he could find answers. It seems that crypto attracts revolutionaries, perhaps backing the idea of a technological or financial revolution brought on by blockchain. As he arrived at Bitcoin Center NYC for his first meetup in 2013, he wondered about the other Bitcoiners: “What are they like? Are they on the same journey that I am on?”Describing the event, he sounded not unlike a pilgrim recounting a tale of a faraway shrine where they’d hoped to find other seekers of truth. The first person he met, Artur Schaback — his soon-to-be business partner — was the only other tall guy in the meeting, “So we got along, and we really bonded over the belief that Bitcoin could help the little guy.” Soon, they started working on a Bitcoin retail solution, but it was no easy ride. The two adventurers “ended up homeless, surfing couches.” Youssef felt he had hit rock bottom, and he needed to ask for help — he was terrified of his mother finding out about his situation. He fasted for a month, and he prayed. “I had to be truly humbled and really begged God for help — I was broken, defeated, and I got a very special night — it was the Night of Power of Ramadan,” he recalled solemnly. Whatever he experienced then, for Youssef, it represented a turning point. Youssef initially moved to the U. S. with his family from Egypt when he was 2, and by 8, he was already working odd jobs. He studied history at Baruch College in New York starting in 1996, but his real passion lay with computers. He got his first PC at 19 and “taught myself to code right away and started doing startups.” He worked as a senior software engineer at early smartphone company YadaYada first for two years before embarking on his entrepreneurial path. The first of these was related to coupons being distributed over text messages, but the idea failed to gain traction. The young entrepreneur soon went on to have his first taste of success, however, as he pivoted to downloadable ringtones. His new company, called MatrixM, “went from like $0 to $1 million revenue in less than six months.”Though he got off to a strong start, the next decade did not provide a comfortable ride. Youssef best describes this turbulent part of his life on LinkedIn, where he writes his title as “Entrepreneur” at “11 failed startups and many lessons learned.” The fact that he did not give up during that time speaks volumes. Though his initial success could be attributed to mere luck, it surely helped him to believe in himself despite years of failure. Whether he was a competent entrepreneur after his first success or not, he surely had put in the hard yards to become one after the 11th failure. In his work at MatrixM, Youssef discovered that peer-to-peer infrastructure, then still in its infancy, was the key to getting access to ringtones and a broad audience — users could upload ringtones as well as download them. Today, Youssef explained, peer-to-peer platforms like Uber and Airbnb have “become part of our daily lives.” The same will soon happen with peer-to-peer finance. “Humanity has been waiting for this one for a lon