Bitcoin Adoption On The Ground – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful and co-founder of the Built With Bitcoin Foundation.
While Bitcoin adoption continues to grow around the world, education remains one of our biggest challenges. Financial literacy should be a right, but in many places around the world people are denied this – or worse, misinformed. But how do you tackle a topic like Bitcoin? In my experience, it is the one-to-one connections that have made the strongest impact.
It starts with trust
The foundation of any good relationship starts with trust. I learned this at a very young age. When I was a child working at my parents’ newsstand in New York City, I often encountered customers from all walks of life and had to navigate how to approach each situation. To give my customers what they needed, I realized that I could only do it by listening to them. This job taught me patience and empathy, and allowed me to understand customer problems early and find the solutions to help them.
When I started Paxful in 2015, I took most of the customer service calls that came through. I will never forget the first call I took from a frantic customer who found my mobile number on our website. She was from Louisiana and told me she was going to be kicked out of her apartment because she was behind on her rent. This was an unbanked American woman who had never had a bank account and never wanted one, but she had to buy an ad with Bitcoin to sell something to make ends meet. I taught her that if she could buy a gift card for a small amount, she could convert it to Bitcoin. Twenty minutes later she called back with the gift card in hand and I walked her through the process. Our conversation lasted about two hours, but towards the end she made her first transaction.
A few days later we started getting hundreds of calls. We ended up directing almost a thousand people through our site and our traders were struggling to fill orders all over the world. While global Bitcoin adoption starts and ends with education – education is nothing without patience, trust and good customer service.
Banking on our community
Throughout my Bitcoin journey, I have met some incredible people who are working to increase education and make a difference around the world. People like the activist Farida Nabourema, who is fighting for democracy in the country of Togo, the Sulaiman brothers who are empowering their community in Nigeria with Bitcoin and Kal Kassa who is spreading knowledge about Bitcoin to remote regions like Ethiopia. An interesting story comes from Paco de la India – a man who has made it his mission to visit 40 countries in 400 days that live mainly on bitcoin. On his journey, he is spreading mass awareness about Bitcoin. He educates strangers on the street and organizes community events, encouraging people to use Bitcoin to access financial freedom. It is stories like those of India that remind us how small actions can bring about big changes.
Bottoms-Up Approach
The key to global Bitcoin adoption stems from a bottom-up approach. That’s why we at Paxful have invested so much of our time on the ground – meeting with users, holding workshops and organizing campus tours. My experience has taught me that you should never underestimate the power of human connection. It is only with education, patience and understanding that we can reach mass adoption and provide equal access to finance to anyone, anywhere.
This is a guest post by Ray Youssef. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
