Over a billion people live in countries with severe inflation and are unable to protect their wealth due to strict capital controls. The banking systems in most of these countries are designed to prevent access to assets like dollars—good luck getting a foreign currency account.

Working in the crypto industry, we spent a lot of time thinking about how it can solve problems for people in the real world. Eventually, we saw a real, grassroots use-case emerge—one outside of the US entirely: people in developing countries started to use crypto exchanges like Binance to hold dollar-denominated stablecoins, which preserved their wealth from inflation. However, these exchanges primarily cater to traders and are still too complex (and crypto-focused) for average users, hindering mass-market adoption.

We knew this was a problem we wanted to work on after speaking to our family and friends: when Shahryar tried explaining crypto to his uncle in Pakistan, it was all jargon until he explained stablecoins, which immediately clicked. For someone who is (1) earning in a currency thatʼs inflating 20-30% year-over-year, (2) whoʼs structurally limited from dollar access, and (3) makes payments abroad regularly, this makes a massive difference.

Karsa looks and feels like a bank/currency exchange to an average user—they choose an amount and buy dollar-denominated stablecoins at a market price. But under the hood, we route our supply from a network of verified peer-to-peer stablecoin traders, whom buyers are making their deposit payments to.

(1) A seller sets their price and deposits money in an escrow smart contract (programmable rules-based code, can only return or release funds between seller and buyer).

(2) A buyer gets matched with that order upon setting their criteria, and has to send a fiat payment (e.g., bank transfer, payment app, etc.) to the sellerʼs local account + upload a photo for verification.

(3) We verify the fiat payment with the seller directly, handle any disputes, etc., and then release the escrowed stablecoins to a digital wallet weʼve created for the buyer.

How is this different? Structuring it as peer-to-peer allows us to actually be global from day one and circumvent government interference—in most of these markets, centralized products (i.e., requiring a bank account in the relevant country) often get shut down. This means that in many of the regions we operate in, weʼre the only way anyone can reasonably get access to stablecoins.

However, weʼve abstracted away the ‘P2P partʼ. In other exchanges, buyers and sellers engage in chats for each transaction (to confirm details, etc.). This is onerous for sellers and off-putting for new buyers. Instead, we sit in the middle, matching price orders and managing verification, appeals, etc. with sellers directly—much less work for sellers, and a simple process for buyers.

Weʼve also abstracted away as much about crypto as possible—no crypto knowledge, wallet / key management, etc. is needed. User funds are held in self-custody crypto wallets, meaning your money is always yours—unlike a centralized exchange (e.g., FTX) thereʼs no way for us to access, freeze, or lose your funds.

We currently take a 1% transaction fee, though we eventually intend to adjust it proportionally to regional FX rates. Over time, we want to support more of the average personʼs financial stack, and are exploring highly-requested features including freelancer payouts, spending via a card, US treasury yield, etc.

You can check us out at https://gokarsa.com. We would love to hear any feedback, questions, or ideas. And if you know anyone in emerging markets whoʼd be interested (naturally, weʼre not really focused on serving US users), feel free to connect us with them at [email protected]!