In February 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria issued a notice banning all the national banks from participating in the trading of cryptocurrency, essentially through exchanges.
Your account may be blocked your account if you trade cryptocurrency. But this does not mean that it cannot take place because facts about crypto are spreading.
How to safely buy, sell, or trade crypto following the ban?
Before the ban, people could sell, buy and trade cryptocurrency on exchanges. Following the prohibition of trading cryptocurrency, people are still looking for other means.
P2P or Peer to Peer trade has gained more ground since the crypto ban. Many crypto companies have developed new ways to incorporate P2P trade in their apps for people to trade cryptocurrency still securely.
BuyCoins and Quidax are two such platforms that have made new changes on their platforms.
These platforms are discarding traditional routes and are now shifting towards Peer to Peer trade (P2P) which essentially means buying directly from the seller of crypto.
There is always a marketplace or a platform that hosts the sellers and buyers. Here, sellers put up ads listing the cryptocurrency they wish to sell and buyers looking to purchase bitcoin. The buyer has the freedom to go through the listings and see what cryptocurrency they want to buy at the suited rate. Once they find the rate, they are willing to pay the buyer and seller to match and trade cryptocurrencies in a direct secure process.
Most P2P platforms use Escrow for trading so that both your money and crypto are safe and are held by third-party companies as standby.
And it is so that nobody loses their money or cryptocurrency if there’s an issue.
How do you make P2P trade?
For instance, you want to sell your bitcoin for some cash in Naira. You want Naira, and you’re looking to trade it for bitcoin. You can start by heading over to a P2P trading app and searching for ads to find the rate you want to sell your bitcoin. Once you find the ideal rate, you initiate a trade.
What such platforms do is put your bitcoin in a third-party company. For example, Escrow
holds your cryptocurrency for you while the buyer sends you the Naira. As you receive the money to your bank account, you click on the paid option only after which the coins are released into the buyer’s wallet.
Another way of trading crypto is to advertise that you are selling a cryptocurrency at a specific rate and wait for potential buyers to reach out to you and initiate trades.
Most platforms have a time limit for the trade, and there is a dispute resolution section in case any dispute regarding the transaction is settled.
Some of the best platforms to do p2p are
Paxful, Quidax, Binance, Buy Coins, and many other apps. These are highly rated and trusted apps to trade cryptocurrency peer to peer.
Advantages of P2P trade
While being highly secure and efficient, a significant benefit of p2p buying is that there are almost no extra fee charges.
Since these apps give a platform for buyers and sellers to directly trade, the fees are negligible apart from a small amount charged by the app as commission.
The P2P platform has many options to choose from different listings, and there is even an option to opt-out from the trade if you happen to change your mind.
Security-wise, traders need to go through an elaborate authentication process to verify their credentials and make sure they feel secure to make transactions.
Conclusions
Yet, there are a few things one needs to be careful about before using these p2p platforms.
Make sure to use a trusted platform to trade cryptocurrencies. Do not fall for traps and cheap rates that look too good to be true since there might be chances of getting hacked or even scammed.
Stick to the same platform you choose to negotiate a trade as some mistakes might cost you your money or cryptocurrency.
And the most important thing to be aware of is that while making crypto transactions, do not fill in the description with words related to cryptocurrency. Transactional reference descriptions can trigger banks and may lead to a ban on your account. As a result of the after-effects of the bitcoin ban in Nigeria. The method to buy and trade bitcoin has changed. There are many ways apart from P2P to trade cryptocurrency, but after the ban in Nigeria, this method can still allow you to trade cryptocurrency.