This is an Op-Ed by Ray Youssef, CEO, NoOnes
The first crypto billionaires gave our industry a marketing boost, but all that hype did us a disservice. Most people don’t get rich buying crypto just like most people who went gold prospecting or drilling for oil didn’t get rich. In every gold rush, the people who made the most money sold the picks and shovels – they didn’t use them to dig for gold.
Howard Hughes, one of the world’s first billionaires, made most of his money in oil, but his oil money came from selling drill-bits to oil prospectors who wanted to get rich quickly. The best traders in crypto have the Howard Hughes mindset because only a very small percentage of crypto traders got rich waiting for it to go to the moon – even those who bought Bitcoin at $1.
There’s a better way to earn money from crypto and the best traders understand how it works.
They look for problems and they find solutions.
For years I’ve been an advocate for crypto as an efficient, inexpensive tool little guys can use to make financial transactions. But all those people using crypto to send money home, make a purchase, or buy a gift card need someone to help them transact – and that’s where the traders come in. They provide the liquidity that makes it possible for the little guys to transact. More and more savvy crypto traders are turning trading into their own business – they are the tech version of the tin sheds that sold picks and shovels to prospectors 150 years ago. And some of those tin sheds are turning into department stores, just like they did during the goldrushes.
About a decade ago, a young Asian student called Martin wanted to buy a Steam gift card. He bought some discounted gift cards online, but soon realized the guys selling to him were making big profits – he found a problem.
Martin knew the guy selling the gift cards was buying them at a cheaper price from someone else, so he went to work. He was soon buying cheaper Steam gift cards, and then he began to sell them to other people looking for a better deal. It didn’t take him long to work-out he could do the same with crypto, and boom! – he was a trader. When Martin finished university, he got a job working for the government, but he kept trading. Like most serious traders, Martin quit his job when he realized he could make more money and have a better lifestyle if he spent more time trading. His problem – expensive gift cards – led to a solution that allowed him to scale his trading into a new lifestyle.
The Remote Worker Boom
The tech economy has opened-up a lot of opportunities for people to be their own boss and create a work schedule to suit their lifestyle. A few years ago, people would laugh if you told them they could earn an income posting pictures of themselves or uploading videos to social media. Peer-to-peer (P2P) businesses like e-Bay, Airbnb, and Uber have created so many opportunities for people to earn an income and be their own boss. The percentage of remote workers jumped during COVID-19, but it had already been increasing, and it remains more than double the level it was in 2019. By 2030, remote digital jobs worldwide are expected to increase by 25.
In the last five years alone, the gig economy in Kenya has increased by 216%.
STATISTICS | Kenya Leads in Gig Economy in Africa with 216% Growth in Online Freelancers in 5 Years – https://t.co/XJxhIy4nvo
— Ọlá (@samcenaexe) April 14, 2025
Despite the up-tick in online workers, people have been slow to grasp the opportunities created by P2P crypto, and maybe that’s because the mainstream media focus on the crypto billionaires, scams and privacy hacks, so average people don’t see crypto for what it is at a fundamental level – a problem solver.
Its utility as a problem-solver is the reason more people in the Global South adopt P2P crypto. The Global South deals with financial transaction problems every day, so they are more likely to search for solutions. On our platform, you can trade with people in 60 countries and use over 500 payment methods. You can make a payment, buy or sell a gift card, remit money, top-up your phone, use a virtual VISA card, and more – and it’s all powered by P2P crypto. Traders just piggy-back off the platform, and their ability to save people time or money and solve problems means they can make money, create businesses, and change their lives.
MILESTONE | NoOnes, a P2P Crypto Trading App for Africa and Emerging Markets, Surpasses 2 Million Users Globally
Unlike other platforms with extensive KYC procedures, NoOnes enables users to trade crypto without ID verificationhttps://t.co/M4GerbuEBm @noonesapp @ray_noOnes pic.twitter.com/CnwbEPLen2
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) January 29, 2025
Julian, an African student, says he wasn’t just broke, he was “stuck,” until he started trading gift cards. He says crypto changed his life because it gave him “real freedom.”
Sheyi Dario is so savvy he teaches other Africans how to trade and has tens of thousands of YouTube followers learning how to make money because crypto trade routes are simply solutions to problems people have making financial transactions. Traders don’t make much on each transaction, but they do it so often they make a living out of it. How much money does Amazon or Alibaba make on a $10 sale? Not much, but it all adds up when you do it at scale, and our traders have the same mindset. They won’t earn a lot of money making a few transactions every week, but if they make a lot of transactions every day they change the game. This year, the worldwide gift card market will be $1.4 trillion. The revenue for Walmart and Amazon is about half that. By 2034, the gift card market will be almost $4 trillion.
“Entrepreneurship is mostly solving a problem and scaling the solution.”
P2P Crypto is an eco-system of people looking for solutions to their problems, and some of them take the extra step and help others find the same solutions. I’ve always known entrepreneurship is mostly solving a problem and scaling the solution, so people who want to be their own boss, to become a trader, just have to find a solution to a problem. If you live in a country that makes it hard for people to make financial transactions, find a solution to help the people affected. They will pay you to make their life easier.
[WATCH] We Will Be Incubating Teams Solving Problems in Africa – A Chat with CEO, Paxful: https://t.co/INyvoXkNzi @raypaxful @paxful #PAXFUL
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) August 31, 2021
I’ve never said trading is easy, but I do say that you don’t need any special skills. You must work for your money, and if you don’t work you won’t make much money – but that’s on you. One of the greatest things Uber did for the world was to make it easy for people to become their own boss without the need for special skills or a great idea – most people can drive a car, use a mobile phone, and navigate Google Maps. The problem is that it’s hard to scale an Uber business. To trade crypto, you need less skills than you need to be an Uber driver because you only need Internet access and a great trading app. And P2P crypto is so much easier to scale than an Uber business. I know – I’ve done it twice.
‘Peer-to-Peer Crypto Trading is Probably Like a Half a Trillion Dollar Business in Nigeria Alone,’ Says Noones CEO and Founder
According to Youssef, who has founded two P2P crypto platforms operating in Nigeria, #Noones and #Paxful, most of the P2P transactions do not happen… pic.twitter.com/84ehGAs3z3
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) May 6, 2024
There probably aren’t many Uber drivers making U.S $10K a month, but there are lots of savvy crypto traders making more than that – and they aren’t making it because crypto went to the moon. Lots of people call crypto a revolution, but we should do more to advocate for crypto as a problem-solver. Crypto is not about the billionaires or the scammers and hackers. Every industry has billionaires, scammers, and hackers.
The fruits of our revolution will become apparent when more people understand the opportunities P2P crypto creates. When that happens, the world will never be the same.
OPINION VIEW | The Pan-African Trade Revolution Might Have Just Started in Kenya
“For years, I’ve been advocating an end to financial apartheid in Africa because when you say ‘your money’s no good’ or ‘we won’t trade with you,’ the end result is a failed economy and chaos… pic.twitter.com/sFNtZUqgxn
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) July 15, 2024
Ray Youssef
CEO, NoOnes
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