LocalBitcoins was launched in 2012 to enable individuals to trade bitcoin on a peer-to-peer basis. Today, LocalBitcoin is the largest P2P bitcoin trading platform in the world and a go-to option for bitcoin investors located in countries where there are no local exchanges.

In this guide, you will discover a step-by-step guide on how to buy bitcoin on LocalBitcoins.

Buy Bitcoin on LocalBitcoins

To buy bitcoin on LocalBitcoins, you will first need to access www.localbitcoins.com and sign up to create an account.

1.   Register an account

To create an account, you need to click on “Sign up free” on the top right of the homepage.

Then, you will land on the registration page where you need to provide a username, an email address, and decide on a password for your account.

Ensure that your password is difficult to guess and not being used at any of your other online accounts.

Once you have filled out the registration form, you will receive a confirmation email. Click on the link in the email to confirm that the email address you have provided belongs to you.

Upon confirmation of your email address, you will be asked to provide personal details, including your full name and phone number.

To confirm that the mobile number is yours, LocalBitcoins will send you a verification code via text message. Enter that code to complete your account setup.

Once you have completed the setup process, you will be redirected to the trading dashboard, and you are ready to start buying and selling bitcoin.

2.   Buy bitcoin

One of the primary reasons why LocalBitcoin has grown to become the leading bitcoin peer-to-peer trading marketplace in the world is because of the high number of payment options it supports. From cash deposit and bank transfer to mobile money and PayPal. Effectively, every payment method imaginable is accepted at LocalBitcoins.

For this guide, we will purchase $1,000 worth of bitcoin using PayPal as a payment method. To do that, we need to access the Buy Bitcoin section and choose PayPal from the payment methods dropdown menu.

Next, you need to choose a seller that is offering the amount of BTC you want to purchase at a price that you are comfortable with. At LocalBitcoins is a peer-to-peer marketplace, prices are set by the platform’s users, which means they can – at times – be higher than on centralized exchanges like Coinbase or Kraken.

Once you have chosen a seller, click on the “Buy” button. At this stage, you will be taken to the offer’s trade page. Here you will find the trade requirements as well as a box where you can input the exact amount of BTC you want to purchase in the currency you have chosen.

In this example, we chose to purchase $1,000 worth of BTC, which equates to 0.097087 BTC at the time of writing. Once you have input the amount you want to buy and have understood the terms of the trade as outlined by the seller, you can click “Send trade request.”

At this point, you have one hour to make the PayPal payment (as per the seller’s exact instructions), and then you will receive your purchased bitcoin in your LocalBitcoins wallet.

LocalBitcoins will hold the bitcoin in escrow throughout this stage of the transaction to reduce the chance of someone paying without receiving their bitcoin and vice versa.

As LocalBitcoins is a peer-to-peer marketplace, it is highly recommended to only trade with users with a high rating to ensure you are not dealing with unsavory characters who may try to take your money without sending you BTC.

3.   Send your bitcoin to a secure wallet

While LocalBitcoins is widely considered as one of the most reputable exchanges in the market, it has not been immune to hacks.

As a result, it is advisable to transfer your purchase bitcoin to a personal bitcoin wallet to which you hold the private keys.

To access your LocalBitcoins wallet, you click “Wallet” on the dashboard and then “Send bitcoins.” There you can add the bitcoin address of your personal wallets to transfer your purchased BTC holdings to your wallet.

Ideally, you should be sending your bitcoin to a hardware wallet that stores your digital currency offline, where hackers have no ability to access it.

The information in this article is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial or investment advice.  Investing in ICOs, IEO’s, cryptocurrencies, or tokens is highly speculative, and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.