How to post a trade offer to buy or sell bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies on LocalCoinSwap.
Start by signing up for your LocalCoinSwap account here. All that is needed to sign up is a valid email address ensuring you can start trading bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies instantly. While you can experiment with creating a trade offer without signing up, your trade offer won't be published and visible to anyone until you activate your account.
Selecting “Create Offer” from the LocalCoinSwap menu will immediately take you to begin the offer creation process.
The process to create a trade offer is largely guided, and most people can make their first trade offer by just following the prompts provided with just a few clicks.
Suppose you have some questions or want to take advantage of some of the more advanced options; read on and learn even more about customizing your trade offers for P2P exchange on LocalCoinSwap.
Customizing Your Trade Offer
Choose your trade type:
Firstly, select if you would like to buy or sell cryptocurrency; if you wish to accept trades for both buying and selling, you can easily create another trade offer after completing the one you are setting up currently.
Pick a cryptocurrency:
Select the cryptocurrency that you would like to buy or sell. While the most popular cryptocurrency for P2P traders is Bitcoin, there’s a range of other opportunities for trading everything from Ethereum (ETH) to Tether (USDT) and the range of other cryptocurrencies listed for trading on the LocalCoinSwap marketplace using P2P exchange.
Select a location:
You can now select the location that you would like to trade within. How specific you are with this depends on the payment method you would like to accept or use. For example, if trading for cash-in-person, you would want to specify a city as you will meet up with the other user. On the other hand, if you are trading via Western Union, SWIFT international transfer, or other worldwide payment methods, traders searching for these types of offers will see worldwide results by default, so you simply need to ensure your offers stand out by being competitive and offering a good experience.
Choose a base pair:
Select the fiat currency you would like to pay or receive funds with; it doesn’t necessarily have to be your local currency. You could just as easily use a common base pair like USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, or GBP in many cases. However, if you do opt for a different currency than your own, ensure you can easily receive it using your chosen payment method and that you understand how to convert between currencies to ensure you are getting a good deal.
A simple way to check how one currency converts into another is to search Google for queries like “1 USD to AUD”, just beware that like the prices of cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies fluctuate in value as well, albeit usually with a lot less volatility.
Payment method for the trade:
At this stage, you’ll be prompted to select the payment method you would like to use. Ensure that this is a payment method that you can reliably use when needed. Ideally, choose a payment method that you are familiar with and comfortable with using.
Payment method for the trade:
Deciding on how to set your price is up next. The default option (dynamic market price) is the simplest method and the most popular. When using dynamic pricing, you only need to decide on two things, what margin you would like to offer compared to the base market price and where you would like that market price to be fetched; by default, CoinMarketCap is selected and is the most popular option. Margins are just a percentage above or below market price. If you are unsure, you can press the “Check Price” button to get a quick price quote based on your selections.
If you would like to specify a fixed nominal price, you can select 'Fixed price.’ For example, if you have chosen EUR as the fiat currency, then input the number 200 into the box will set your price at 200 EUR, irrelevant of the market price.
Pricing equations are also an option, though these are typically only required for more advanced use cases. If you are unsure if you need this option, the odds are high it will be unnecessary in your case. For more information on pricing equations, please see here where you can find a breakdown and explanation for some ways to take advantage of pricing equations if you’re a more advanced P2P vendor.
Controlling trade limits:
Trade limits enable you to set the minimum and maximum trade sizes you want to accept. Setting these with some thought ensures you aren’t wasting time declining trade requests that aren’t interesting to you or you cannot fulfill. Trade limits are set in the local currency you have selected for your trade offer (e.g., USD). Simply enter a min and max or accept the default to proceed.
Set your trading Terms:
In this field, you can enter any conditions you require for the user to complete the trade. Your trading terms are a great way to share any information about the types of trades you are looking for in a more informative way and make it clear what you would expect from a trading partner to be open to completing a trade.
Below the trade term text area, you are also asked if you wish to include a trade headline; this is an excellent idea as it helps your trades stand out if you have a catchy headline. However, including a trade headline is entirely optional.
Decide when you are available to trade:
This section allows you to select the hours that you will be available for trades. You can have your trade offer not visible for times when you will be unable to respond. For example, when you are sleeping or otherwise engaged. While you may be tempted to set this to always available, your offers will start getting paused if you aren’t responding to trade requests. Also, it’s unlikely traders will return to your offer if you aren’t responsive, so it’s always best to set realistic availability times.
If your schedule is more complex, you can independently set different availability windows for different days of the week by selecting the “Set custom daily hours” below the everyday selector.
Non-custodial or Custodial:
If you are trading something other than Bitcoin, you can skip this one. Still, if you are trading the most popular digital currency, you’ll need to select whether you wish to accept custodial trades (standard), non-custodial trades, or both. If you are unsure what to choose here, simply select standard until you get more familiar with the differences.
##Advanced Trade Offer Options
Hidden Offers:
While it may seem counterintuitive to have your trade offer hidden, it can be pretty valuable. For example, if you create a custom trade offer for a specific trader, friend, or otherwise, creating a hidden trade offer will enable you to do so and share the link directly with the intended recipient.
Liquidity tracking:
Turning liquidity tracking automatically adjusts your trade limits for a specific advertisement depending on how much you have sold. Liquidity tracking is helpful if you only have a set amount of cryptocurrency you wish to trade.
Allowed trade sizes:
Certain payment methods may require specific trade sizes. For example, if you are selling a gift card only available for $20, $50, or $100. In this case, you would input 20, 50, 100. You may also just have preferences for specific increments; if that’s the case, this enables you to set your preferences for that. Another situation where specific trade sizes may be useful is cash trading if you only want to receive banknotes rather than coins.
Automatic cancel time:
Automatic cancel time is the minutes after which a trade will be canceled if you do not accept the trade. A shorter time will encourage more traders to respond to your advertisement. Therefore, be sure to set a reasonable period considering how long it will take for you to respond on average.
For the following three settings, only users that meet the requirements will be able to see and respond to your advertisement.
Photo ID Required:
Turn this on if you will only sell to users that have verified photo ID.
Phone verification required?:
Turn this on if you require potential traders to have
Minimum rating of other traders:
Here you can set a minimum rating of traders. For example, if you set this to say 90%, traders with a lower rating will not be able to see your offer.
Publishing Your Trade Offer
Once you have customized your trade offer to match your preferences and are satisfied with your selections, simply click “Publish Trade,” and your ad will be live, given it is within your hours of availability.
While there is a lot of flexibility offered to you when creating a trade offer, there are only a few selections that you will need to make to create a typical trade offer. How specific you want to be with the more advanced and optional settings is entirely up to you, and you’ll find in most cases, the default settings will be just fine. We hope reading this has helped you understand everything there is to know about creating a trade offer on LocalCoinSwap.
If you’re interested in P2P trading or cryptocurrency in general, be sure to check out our own LocalCoinSwap Academy, where we provide a vast range of free cryptocurrency education for P2P traders and even just those with interest in cryptocurrency.