In the midst of all the talk about bubbles and bitcoin millionaires, it is very refreshing to hear about a business that is actually transforming the world. A guest on CCN before is Ray Youssef is the co founder of Paxful, a peer to peer marketplace.
Ray’s story is unusual. As a young teenager he set up a business in the cell phone industry and made a lot of money very quickly. He sold that business and went onto the next one expecting the same level of success but instead of a booming profit, it didn’t work. Undeterred he set up another business, and that too failed. In fact he went on to found another seven businesses that all failed and in the process lost of his money and ended up homeless.
While utterly down and out he met a fellow homeless friend, Artur, and they both decided to go into business – why not! It was what they had learnt while at the bottom of the gutter that formed their new business – Paxful.
There are some 40million people without a bank account in the US today. They have to use great ingenuity to transact commerce, pay bills and purchase goods. Paxful was able to bridge the gap between the unbanked and commerce by using bitcoin. People could purchase gift cards for cash and then transact online. This was hugely important for people outside the banking industry in the US, but ever more important in the developing world where the majority of people are unbanked, may be limited in what they can purchase online by government rules – but they do have mobile devices.
In this radio interview on popular Irish radio station, DublinCityFm, Ray explains how failure turned him into a successful entrepreneur – eventually – and using his experience created a business that each month allows $50 million in value be converted between iTunes gift cards and bitcoin from users doing business in Africa and China.
Listen to his interview on DublinCityFM with our reporter Jillian Godsil and find out what a successful bitcoin entrepreneur spends on profit on – hint it is not a Lamborghini!
Listen here to the half hour show
