The roadblocks in selling crypto back to fiat, to a spendable medium, have been both inconvenient and frustrating to say the least. Even buying can be a nightmare sometimes!
There are different platforms and services dependant on the country you live in, and I'm not sure on the current situation for yourselves.
For myself at least, in the UK, for the purpose of time and ease, my go-to sale place would originally have been Coinbase. The problem for a while now, is that Coinbase have not been allowing direct withdrawals (wire transfer) from a GBP wallet, (although 'of course' they allow wire transfer instant BUYS).
The solution to this problem says that UK withdrawals must be done via the EUR wallet, and then sent via SEPA transfer to your bank (if it supports it).
Hey this works, but they are destroying you with fees and it may take 3-5 working days before its in your account. In summary, I only buy from Coinbase now.
Now my go to sale place, although I partly hated it, was BitPay. I hated it due to how easy and quick you could sell and be spending it, this makes holding onto your hard earned crypto much more difficult.
The transactions fees weren't too bad... other than the time BTC network fees went through the roof! It had a nice app for ease of transfer with its own Bitcoin wallet integrated with exportable private keys. Unfortunatly BitPay's card issuer, Wavecrest, lost their license from Visa, meaning they could no longer distribute cards and all current cards disabled.
I am not sure who is at the forefront of crypto prepaid Visa, but TenX has a new card issuer in the works since being affected by the same issue as BitPay. The Monaco team look promising but they do not yet have a finished product.
Alot of other companies offer crypto to fiat services such as Gemini etc. But, along with Coinbase, verification has always been an issue. The fact that you may not want multiple companies having your personal data is enough, sometimes to the point of needing scans of a passport and a picture of yourself. Regulation is needed but it can be incredibly intrusive and creates an inaccessible environment.
This is where LocalBitcoins comes in. Its like ebay/gumtree style trading .
Sellers and buyers have ratings with a review system integrated. Its also always pretty busy with a decent variety of trades available. I wanted to sell a little, just to test the waters and go through the trade flow and user experience of the website.
- First sign up, email and password, no ID needed.
- Send some Bitcoin to the account wallet.
- Search for people looking to buy.
- Choose preferred payment method as National Bank Transfer( I found this is equivalant to Faster Payments and money comes through instantly)
- Find an ad by someone with good reviews, make sure thier conditions and trading limits match up with your expectations ( price, trade limit, trade window ) .
- If all is well, continue and enter how much BTC you want to sell (fiat amount will be calculated accordingly).
- Enter your sort code & account number, along with any notes for the buyer/seller.
- Click initiate trade and wait for the trader to respond. Personally my experience was that the money was in my bank within 1 minute of initiating the trade.
- Once you've confirmed your payment has been received, you must release the bitcoin to the buyer which has been held in escrow since the trade started.
- Trade Finished!
You can also chat with the trader throughout the entire process.
This process always has its downfalls, but as long as you use common sense you'll steer clear of the scammers. I recommend finding trustworthy buyers/sellers you've used numerous times before using LocalBitcoins to trade large amounts.
There are many different payment options yoy can choose, some may be safer or quicker than others, you can also always meet someone in person to make the trade, but its not the most convenient!