The Easy Way to Buy Bitcoin

7 min readDec 22, 2020

Originally published at https://nooor.io on December 22, 2020.

I bet you’ve been thinking of bitcoin recently. You may have even considered buying or selling some, if not already. Probably, you also know that the most popular go-to place to trade crypto is an exchange. But you can get burned if you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s a risk of theft, scam, or excessive fees. There are more than 30,000 crypto exchanges out there. How to know which one is the best?

Where to Buy Bitcoin?

First, there are several types of exchanges-centralized, decentralized, and peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces.

A centralized exchange acts as a middleman between buyers and sellers. First, it takes the money both from the sellers and the buyers. Then it matches their requests to buy and to sell and charges fees on both of them. The buyer and the seller never meet on the platform. The result is fast trading but at the cost of high fees and a serious security threat.

Decentralized exchanges came to fight this shortcoming. The buying and selling orders are executed via a secure smart contract that doesn’t require you to give away control over your crypto. But they are relatively unpopular now, so there’s a problem with finding trading counterparts. As a result, they have low liquidity which affects the speed.

Finally, there are P2P marketplaces that combine the best of 2 worlds-speed and security. A P2P marketplace connects the sellers with buyers so that they can find a match and trade directly without intermediaries with each other. One of the largest such P2P exchanges at the time of writing is Paxful.

Why Use P2P Exchanges?

Fast, reliable, and cheap ways of transferring funds are the key to the crypto industry.

Fast and convenient. This is where P2P exchanges beat centralized ones. You’re directly dealing with people here. So there are as many ways to pay here as people are ready to receive. As a result, besides conventional bank transfers and credit card payments, MoneyGram, PayPal, WebMoney, Qiwi, and even gift-cards are happily accepted as a means of payment. There are over 350 payment options available at Paxful, and you choose the fastest and most convenient one. Try to compare any centralized exchange with that.

Secure. The other aspect where P2P exchanges shine is security. There are plenty of regulated trustworthy exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, or Kraken. But the fact that you have to deposit your crypto to their account makes it technically possible to get them hacked and stolen. Not your keys, not your coins, they say. Besides, if the exchange faces an investigation from authorities, it can suspend all withdrawals. That, in fact, happened with OKEx in October this year. So you’ll have to wait until the exchange gets back to business. This scenario is impossible to imagine in the case of P2P exchanges. Here all the funds are kept directly by the owners.

Low Costs. And finally, you don’t need to deposit your money to the exchange’s account before trading as in the case of regular exchanges. This cuts one step and the associated costs in comparison to centralized platforms. For example, there can be a depositing fee of up to 1% on many exchanges. Additionally, you may have to pay around $15 for a SWIFT transfer to the exchange’s bank account. And the exchange usually charges a trading fee for every transaction. That’s not the case at P2P exchanges. You agree with the seller on the fastest and cheapest payment option.

The Role of P2P Exchanges in the Crypto Industry

As the crypto industry is gaining more and more popularity, the need for a fast and safe way of buying and selling bitcoin arises. Various peer-to-peer platforms conduct cryptocurrency exchanges such as Paxful, Coinffeine, LocalBitcoins, and many more. Each of them has a security system to prevent fraud and ensure safe transfers. For example, Coinffeine has a system of obligatory deposits: before the trade starts, participants must deposit a certain amount of bitcoins. If all goes well, those deposits return to the users. LocalBitcoins allows the participants of exchange to meet in person to conduct their trades. This way, they make sure that the deal is fully completed before parting ways. Paxful is one of the highly recommended platforms in the market and recently gained enormous popularity among crypto users. Now let’s dig deeper and discover why we like Paxful and how it can make your crypto life easier.

What is Paxful?

Paxful is an international cryptocurrency P2P transaction platform. The company was founded in 2015 in New York and currently has more than 4․8 million users worldwide. The mission of Paxful is to allow you to manage your finances on your own.

How does It Work?

The best way to understand how it works is to think of it as eBay for crypto trades. Paxful, in this manner, is a modern variant of the traditional market, where sellers and buyers communicate directly and agree on the terms of the transaction and payment method. And the participation of other intermediaries, banks, for example, is not required. So when you buy on this website, you don’t have to pay any transaction fees to the platform. Your money goes directly to the seller. And only the seller has to pay a commission to the platform, as in the case of eBay. Paxful supports only bitcoin and Tether trading on the platform. However, you can buy them with other crypto assets, such as ETH, LTC, and XRP. At Paxful, you will find over 350 payment methods of buying and selling BTC and USDT. Any Paxful user can create an offer to buy or sell bitcoin and set a price and preferred payment method. So the chances are little that you can find a lower bitcoin price in the current market. For one-time transactions, you can use the already published offers of other users, grouped by payment method. These offers are available for every website viewer, and it doesn’t require registration. Go check for yourself!

Why We Like Paxful

Paxful is Simple and Fast

The motto of Paxful is “Simplicity and speed”, so it offers a clean and easy way of using the system. It doesn’t include charts and other widgets that make the screen complex. Being a P2P marketplace, Paxful offers a simple process of buying bitcoin safely in no time.

Paxful has made sure to make the platform user-friendly. All users can now add their bank details in their account settings for faster bank transactions. When creating offers, you can select the option that automatically transfers your account details to the trading partner just after the trade starts. This option helps both sides to save time and avoid mistakes. Another cool feature is that if earlier you had to know the receiver’s wallet address to send bitcoins, a username on the Paxful platform is enough for this. No more confusion.

Paxful is Reliable

The company recently announced that it has reached 4․8 million users. The total deals’ volume crossed a decent USD 4.6 billion. And it had less than 1% of disputed deals over this volume.

Paxful is Secure

It’s easy to become a fraud victim in the crypto space, and no P2P platform can fully guarantee there are no scammers on the site. There’s always a risk. And you should always do your best to keep your funds safe. However, Paxful makes sure to protect its users to the fullest. It directly connects you to the seller. But to ensure that nobody runs away before the trade is made, Paxful holds the crypto in an escrow wallet. Only after the parties confirm that the trade was successful, it moves the crypto to the buyer. This ensures safety both for the buyer and the seller. Further, there are user rankings that make it easier to find trusted traders on the platform.

Continuous improvement of the security of transactions is always a priority for Paxful. That’s why the team focuses on protecting the users with:

KYC procedure: To make transactions on the platform, you must undergo a KYC procedure to verify your identity. This check aims to improve the security of the platform and reduce the probability of fraud in transactions.
Prompt support service: In disputable situations, the platform support service is responsible for the solution. This department of the company employs 80 people who speak multiple languages and are in different time zones.

Besides the security aspects that make you feel at ease, Paxful comes with another awesome feature.

You Can Buy and Sell Gift Cards with Bitcoin

Isn’t that great to turn a gift card you’re not going to use into a bitcoin investment? You can do it with Paxful! Moreover, you can buy the world’s most popular gift cards like Steam, Amazon, eBay, or iTunes with your bitcoins with a significant discount of up to 50%. Choosing Sell Bitcoin and the payment method Discount Gift Cards on the platform, you will immediately see many offers for the profitable purchase of gift cards of different brands.

The Paxful team takes measures to ensure the safety of this process as well. For example, the platform categorically bans gift card resale, and resellers are easily found and blocked. So you can take advantage of this feature and rest assured that everything works as intended.

How Can You Buy Bitcoin on Paxful?

Buying bitcoin on Paxful is easier than you think. Just after you create an account on the website, you get a free Bitcoin wallet. Next, you can buy and sell your coins in 3 simple steps.

Choose your preferred payment method
Enter the amount of money you’re willing to spend
Click buy Bitcoin now

I hope you’re convinced that buying bitcoin can be as easy as one-two-three. The bottom line is to always look for safe, fast, convenient, and inexpensive options. And Paxful provides just that. Now go get the best deals there.