TL;DR
- Pick the least volotile cryptocurrency
- Agree on a price. The price is final. It should not be changed untill the end of the transaction.
- Exchange the addresses. Send your contact your public key or bank account details or prepare cash.
- Double check information that was provided in the previous step, especially the public key.
- Perform the transaction
- 🍻 #manualex
Every now in then you'll enter in a deal where you'll want to buy/sell some crypto for fiat in a direct transaction with a friend or a lesser known contact. Say, your friend asked you for some Bitcoins (because s/he does not have access to Coinbase, for example) and you are willing to help. The problem is: crypto is very volotile. Price can change dramaticaly during the time of the manual transaction. Prices differ between exchanges. This can cause conflict and misunderstanding between buyer and seller at the time of the transaction.
Picture the following conversation:
- Person A: "Let's deal at $500/Bitcoin… on these two exchanges it goes for $490 on this one for $520… so let's average"
- Person B: "Okay. $500/bitcoin. Deal. Here is my public key 49GPtAMvr…"
- Person A: "Here is my bank account details…" (5 minutes later)
- Person A: "Ok. Sent $$$ to your bank account"
- Person B: "Hold on… price just significantly moved! Let's deal at $480 per Bitcoin"
- Person A: "WTF?! We agreed on $500 just now… Not cool… WTF are you thinking?"
The situation above is definately very plesant. Market price shifted in favor of Person A and Person B wanted a correction… But the price could have moved the other way as well. You never know. Both were taking equal risk.
- Anyone can contribute and improve this guide. Please submit pull requiest to https://github.com/ksaitor/manual-crypto-exchange-guide We'd like to keep this protocol, ethical guide as simple and accessible as possible. For anyone, regardless of technical or other blockchain experience, to use.
- Please use simple language.
- Avoid technical jargon.
- Avoid over-generalizing. Some readers might only be familiar with Bitcoin, and might not even heard of Ethereum or other cryptocurriences. This guide should still be useful to such public.
- English might not be the first language of contributors to this document, so be kind.
- Be kind.