Bitcoin Forum

Recently, I posted this question on my local message board, but I'd love to hear from you all.  For those who exchange their bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies with friends for local fiat currency (I call it local P2P), and for those who use the P2P trade option on Binance, Remitano, Paxful, or any other exchange which in your opinion is the best. I mean, in terms of convenience, security, and assurance, how does the user experience compare?

This is not a matter of which one is the best but a thing of preference and choice, why should a user engage with the use of local p2p as you called it with friends when the ones on the decentralized and centralized exchanges where your coins are were there waiting for you, i can only admit this if the limited amount wanted to sell is too small to the limited amount an exchange could perform for p2p, but as for me i will rather avoid having direct dealings with buyers in persons i know or i don't even know at all because they can come up with any funny show for show regarding that, also are they trusted escrow service providers? because this is something that has to do with trust, if you think your privacy and trust are reliable with them it's ok.

Just not wanting to trouble myself with security concerns and invading a lot of my privacy, local p2p for local fiat cash I do only with people I know in the form of gift cards (exchange vouchers) with negotiable fees ;D, otherwise I use formal withdrawals on the local exchange.

For the "local p2p" does it have to be with friends? or you mean any in person/F2F trades will do? Because In my case, only a very few people IRL knows i dabble into crypto and I have never considered trading with them since I'll have to start a whole ted talk about the whole thing (bc they're beginners) which I have no energy for lol.

I don't know what is local P2P, but there are peer-to-peer websites that work just fine even without passing kyc verification and you can find them on kycnot.me.
There is also decentralized exchange Bisq that can be used for exchanging Bitcoin with local fiat currencies and few other altcoins.
For Binance, Payful and other similar website you need to pass website, but they probably have better trading volume and offers.

The P2P exchange that involves a lot of traders is better for me.

1.  Firstly, you get to sell or buy whenever you want, since there is someone always willing top buy or sell.
2. The offers are much better. I have traded with my friends directly, but I end up charging them at market rate but on a platform at times I trade at very good rates

Mostly, everyone who uses these platforms is looking for three things, availability of people to transact with, security, and low fees. If these three things are available, the experience will be good regardless of the rest of the things, and the most important factor in these three things is the availability of people to trade with them.

Therefore, your rating (Local P2P VS Exchange in-app P2P) will not be of good if there are not enough buy and sell orders.

As others have said, the experience would vary wildly. If I don't have many friends or local traders then it would be absolutely tiring to make a trade with them. P2P platforms exist to solve this, so their experience must be better. If they fail to do it, then either the user is not their target market or their platform is terrible.