True peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading is great, it's legal, it preserves privacy, you don't have to pay any fees, and sometimes you even make friends. Do you buy and sell Bitcoin peer-to-peer, in person, maybe even for cash?
What's something you consider P2P etiquette? What's something you wish more people did or knew?
I'll start:
- I always meet in person, and will only transact Bitcoin and cash. I have to be very clear about that, because it already happened that people showed up in person, expecting me to take their wire transfer.
- Great places to meet are libraries (if you and your peer are able to converse with a soft voice), hotel, bank or post lobbies. Bitcoin meetups can be the ideal place if you haven't transacted much P2P before.
- I will make it clear in advance what reference exchange rate I typically use, e.g. the Kraken pair for my local currency
- I don't accept or charge any markup or discount to the reference rate, but I do expect whoever is making the Bitcoin transaction to pay their network/routing fees
- Lightning very much preferred! I don't want to sit around for an hour waiting for a block to be mined. I understand that especially for large amounts, this might not be practical
- I haven't quite worked out the exact flow, but so far it seems to be most appropriate for the buyer to show they brought the cash, then share their Bitcoin address/LN invoice, then for both to agree on an exchange rate, then for the money to be counted and then for the Bitcoin transaction to be made. Once the Bitcoin transaction has been confirmed/completed, the seller takes the cash off the table.
- There's no safe way to advertise these deals, and I don't think there will be. So offers and bids are likely made in your local groups's Telegram chat room, or the local Bitcoin meetup. It's always worth to ask at the end of the trade if they would like to meet again. Most people are either consistently selling (for example because they're earning Bitcoin), or buying (because they're stacking or spending). Good to know who belongs to the other group than you!