Hey! We're adding countries as we hear from users that have demand there — are you from Tunisia / would you like to see it supported? If so, please reach out at shahryar@gokarsa.com and I'd love to chat

Hey -- thank you for this feedback. Honestly, a huge (and obvious) oversight on our part. Gonna fix this shortly.

Hey Rafay -- this is super thoughtful advice. Will reach out, would love to talk more about this.

Thanks!

Frankly, the order matching will be pretty simple at the beginning: Match buyer/seller payment methods, make sure buyer order ≥ seller's available amount, then pick lowest price option. We just have to query the escrow contract on chain to make sure the seller amount is available.

We're fully pursuing all KYC/AML/Sanctions restrictions. Couldn't operate as a US fintech company without doing this.

The pitch is to do things that are specifically illegal in other countries and hide behind the US not extraditing you.

I suppose it fits the zeitgeist.

Other than the seller being someone able and willing to break the law in Pakistan to get dollars to people who want them, yes.

Absolutely following all US Sanctions and AML policies (setting up more rigorous KYC, transaction screening, MTLs etc. as we speak). We're a US company and intend on doing this the right way.

How do you ensure AML and CFTC compliance? Aren't self-custodial wallets private by nature?

A number of onchain forensics companies (Chainalysis, TRM Labs) have gotten pretty good at detecting suspicious activity

Correct! There's certainly a lot of regulations to navigate, but we are strict about NEVER touching the fiat in any country; just connecting buyers and sellers.

Thank you, we hope it does help a lot of people.

We use privy, one of the best-in-class wallet providers that basically creates a self-custody wallet, but uses email/phone/social auth (and encrypts/shards the actual keys). So you wouldn't be at risk of losing them like you would with a vanilla wallet (you can of course export the keys if you're more crypto-savvy)

We're doing a pretty slow and steady rollout to catch where users are running into issues, but it's a pretty controlled environment re: messing up. You could accidentally send money to the wrong address if you wanted to transfer to another wallet, but that's not a core functionality (located on a side page) and certainly not one that the average person is using. Outside of that, there isn't really anything else you could severely mess up.

Hey, I'm going to add support for this immediately! I'd love to chat a bit more and hear about the situation there; do you mind reaching out with your contact to shahryar@gokarsa.com?

Thanks!

You'd use our platform!

User A sends local currency to User B's fiat account.

User B sends stablecoins (earned via salary, trading, mining, etc.) to User A's digital wallet (that we've created for them).

How do you demonstrate that User B earned their stablecoins via “salary, trading, mining, and etc.”; as opposed to through crime, whether the conventional crypto sort or through subverting currency controls?

What, other than money laundering, would motivate a person who had a supply of such stablecoins to want to supply them to into a market with currency controls? Is the concept there “I make my expat wages in dollars, I want to turn them back into $CURRENCY at the black market rate”?

Does user B need any sort of exchange/money transmitter license?

Do you check the laws for this in each country you are available in?

Do you notify user B of this fact and the potential legal risks?

Do you verify if they have the license?

User B is sending a peer-to-peer transaction, akin to a Zelle or Venmo. In most other countries, these peer-to-peer payments (PIX, UPI, etc.) do billions of transactions per month. And since you're sending your own funds, you're not a money transmitter. If we do work with any larger entities (e.g., an OTC desk, liquidity provider), we'd certainly be cognizant of the relevant licensing.

> And since you're sending your own funds, you're not a money transmitter.

It's MUCH more complicated than that in several countries, particularly the US.

Assuming you get banned, is your plan just "never visit any country where we do business"?

Hahaha we've had this conversation internally a couple of times.

Definitely a few places that we'd probably avoid. But also plenty of others (e.g., Kenya, LatAm, Turkey, etc.) that have been quite friendly and would be fine to visit.