LocalBitcoins was founded in June 2012 by Nicholas Kangas in Helsinki, Finland.
As a peer to peer Bitcoin exchange, LocalBitcoins was one of the first platforms of its kind to allow people from anywhere in the world, to buy and sell Bitcoin, free of centralized exchanges like Coinbase.
Not everyone looking to buy Bitcoin can satisfy the strict know-your-customer ID verification processes required by exchanges like Coinbase. Because of this, peer to peer exchange platforms provides a perfect solution, in that users can buy Bitcoin instantly, directly from other individuals.
Sadly, in recent years, increasing fraud on LocalBitcoins (on the part of both sellers and buyers) has resulted in significantly reduced platform user-friendliness. This being the case, we’ve compiled a list of 5 leading alternatives to Localbitcoins, for people looking to purchase Bitcoin directly from other users.
Like LocalBitcoins, Paxful is a fully peer to peer bitcoin exchange which connects people looking to buy Bitcoin with people selling coins.
Benefiting from high trust scores, many people choose to purchase Bitcoin on Paxful, specifically due to the high amount of supported payment options. In fact, Paxful is one of the only remaining peer-to-peer exchanges which allows people to buy Bitcoin instantly using both PayPal and pre-funded Visa and MasterCards.
One of the newest peer to peer Bitcoin exchange platforms on the market, Coinffeine is a Spanish based decentralized exchange which was first established in 2015. What is more, Coinffeine charges no fees to either buyers or sellers of Bitcoin on its platform. However, unlike LocalBitcoins and Paxful, Coinffeine offers a very limited range of payment options.
In order to buy Bitcoin instantly on Coinffeine, users will first need to set up and fund a separate OKPay account. Moreover, when buying Bitcoin from another Coinffeine user, funds are never exchanged directly across Coinffeine itself. Instead, funds move from the buyers OKPay account to the sellers. - The only downside to this being that buyers need to exercise more caution when choosing sellers to trade with.
Bitsquare.io is an even newer peer to peer Bitcoin exchange than Coinffeine, having first launched as BETA in April 2016.
A fully open source peer to peer exchange, BitSquare allows its users to buy and sell Bitcoin instantly, using a wide variety of altcoins and real-world fiat currencies. These currently include US Dollars, Euros, and Yen.
Different from other peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange platforms so far discussed, BitKan is a predominantly app-based cryptocurrency exchange.
Orientated mainly toward Chinese users, BitKan allows users to select a person to trade with and negotiate trade specifics directly. This subsequently results in slightly higher trading risk. However, at present, BitKan has over 2 million users and has just raised over $10 million in renewed platform investment capital.
While not a Bitcoin-based peer to peer cryptocurrency exchange, there are several reasons why people dissatisfied with LocalBitcoins, might want to consider LocalMonero.
Just like LocalBitcoins, LocalMonero allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrency instantly on a peer to peer basis. However, instead of trading Bitcoin, users buy and sell the popular privacy coin, Monero. (Which if they want, they can easily exchange elsewhere later for Bitcoin).