Bitcoin Forum

As you know that local bitcoins is making it compulsory for thier users to get verified prior to October 1.
Details here : https://localbitcoins.com/blog/tier-verification-deadline-extended/

I want to know what is the minimum requirement to be able to buy / sell bitcoins from the site. If i am verified at Tier 0 only, do i still need to complete the tier 1 and tier 2 verification ?

So if you are trading over 1000 € per year and you are verified at Tier 0, your account will be suspended until you complete Tier 1 or Tier 2 verification based on your trade volume. If you are trading less then 1000 € per year, you don't need Tier 1 or 2, Tier 0 will suffice. Hope this answers your question.

And how do we know what is my trade volume ? I mean i sometimes uses local bitcoins to buy and sell btc and i do not have a proper business setup there where i buy for less and sell at high. So for people like me , tier 0 will be enough ?

Yes indeed. I myself never trade more than 1000 euros a year on Localbitcoins since I have other mediums to withdraw the money.
So it won't make a difference for people like us whose trading volume is less than 1000 euros. We won't need to provide any verification of such sort.

As of now you don't actually have to sit and do something but you should understand that you need to at least verify your identity , like passport or something and plus you have to also upload your face photo at the same time , some users might ask you to actually send your mobile number to trade with you actually.
These steps might seem weird but they are actually going to be good for us as they can get us clear of Scams.

The invincible hand of government is pushing for a compulsory KYC in crypto exchanges and sites. The other day, we saw the introduction of KYC by the popular DEX called Idex. I am not against KYC. Any good KYC system to see a mass adoption of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, I am okay. Maybe some persons from some parts of the world may later have issues with KYC because of USA economic policies and sanctions.

Yes, if you use the exchange https://idex.market, you cannot trade on it unless you create an account there and do the KYC. I think for the traders, we should realize that there was now very less options where we can buy/sell and trade crypto without KYC, so its better to do kyc then for looking for conditions on how to avoid the KYC.

Seriously, the question would be more, how you might NOT know your trade volume.

In the LB dashboard, you have a history of all your trades, you simply check what trades you have and you have the volume.
Anyhow, 1000 euros is such a small amount nobody that is using the site actively will be able to stay below, 3-4 trades a year and you're going to be over the limit.
And for a small amount, if you deal in 30-40 euros range it makes no sense as the 3rd party commissions will eat away any profit you might make.

As for being enough, you know better how much money you want to exchange, how could we know about your finances?
For me, as I said 1000euros a year is a way to low, a month, yeah I would have managed but this is actually 80 euros a month, close to the monthly bus pass...common


I can't stop laughing, a decentralized exchange is asking for KYC. So, what is left decentralized in there?

I reccomend to use local ETH instead after this KYC policy

I doubt tiers 0 will be enough for your kind of trading unless you don't get much customers. It's better you upgrade to tiers 1 or watch your total transactions to ensure it doesn't exceed #1000 per year.

You could surpass #1000 yearly limit easily if you're a regular buyer and seller on the exchange.

Yes, if you are a bit active on local bitcoins, you need to upgrade to tier 1 at least in order to continue using the site.
I have still not verified myself on local bitcoin but I am planning to do so in a couple of days. Can anyone tell me their experience, on how many days it takes for the site to verify the KYC ?

That's is what concern me too. There must be a some push from the authorities to make all the crypto enabled sites KYC compulsory and this cannot be done in decentralized environment. I see KYC as a big hurdle in making crypto a truly decentralized entity. :(

Almost majority of the exchange now are getting strict with the rules, and one of this they are implementing
KYC to get verify their client users. Because if they don't comply it, there is a possibility that your account can't able
to withdraw, they will freeze your balance in terms of withdrawal concepts.

It’s just the way things are going at the moment. If bitcoin is to gain total, mainstream adoption then this kind of verification is going to be needed. For the record I have Tier 2 verification on LBC.

Why wouldn't know your trade volume? Like Stompix mentioned, you can find your trade history in your dashboard. If you are rarely using it and if you are purchasing power is not high as others, then yeah Tier 0 will suffice.

I believe the OP is from Pakistan, where PKR 15,000 (~87 €) is the minimum wage for a month. So 80 €  is not the same for everyone, for some its a full months salary for others it might be a one-day expense.

Hello everyone,


     I'm trying to find an answer for a question I have and this thread seems to be the most adequate to post it, instead of creating a new one. I'm on Tier 0 and was planning on verifying my identity because some traders require this for you to be able to open a trade with them. However, I read the localbitcoins' official post for the id verification update and I'm confused by this:

"T0 accounts, i.e. users who have only onboarding verification, can complete buy trades but will not have a LocalBitcoins receiving wallet address neither be able to sell BTC and post ads."

     I'm really not sure if I'm understanding this very well but, this actually says that I can buy bitcoins but can't sell them. I have to buy the rest of the remaining amount to reach the Tier 0 limit, do the verifications for Tier 1, and then sell all those bitcoins while, in the meantime, having that money sitting there and not being able to use it. Please confirm this, because I think it's crazy. A new user would have to buy EUR 1,000 worth of bitcoins before they sell any. I hope I'm just misunderstanding that.

     If this is true, the only possible way I see to "sell" those bitcoins is with some "friend", sending them the bitcoins to their wallet and managing the payment independently. Or you can just reach any tier without reaching the limit and the tier limit is just the volume you can manage? Probably I'm just confused.

     I used my receiving wallet address about a month ago, but well, that was before October 1.

With T0 Account you will be able to buy/sell but can't put up your own ads. You will be able to trade only 1000 Euro/Year. If you already traded over 1000 Euro your account will be locked you won't able to deposit or withdraw until you verify for T1. Same goes with trading you won't able to buy or sell if you already hit your T0 Limit. I hope it clears everything for you.

What does it clear?
You wrote 3 generic lines and you never addressed the issue.



I'm already verified on LB so I can't check but if it says so...it probably means that they are starting to cut on every possibility of turning your BTC into fiat anonymously. Even with the 1k limit you could still open 1000 accounts and sell though each one 900euros worth of btc.
Right now...it seems you can only buy.


No, you don't need that sum to reach a tier.
The sum is the maximum amount you can trade before they ask you for further documents.
So you can be on T3 with 100$ traded if you're willing to give them all the info.

AFAIK,next tier verification tab will be available only after we reach half of the volume of current tier.

Now I am at tier 2 which means I got 200,000 limit per year but I can't submit the request until I hit $100,000 traded volume.

Thanks for explaining all because I was also very confuse whats going on but now have all cleared and just with in few mintues I already passed T0 and T1 hopefully will clear T2 in next few days as I have to do this all for my necessity.

You don't need to go through tier 1 verification for as long as you stay under their prescribed limits, which IIRC is 1000 EUR.

If you want to go through to tier 1, then you get 20k EUR a year in limits which isn't a lot actually. It seems like that the lowest viable tier that you need to be in if you want to trade actively on LBC as an advertiser would be tier 2, which demands proof of address alongside the traditional proof of ID.

It's honestly pretty crappy for regular traders to have to go through this. Like me, I personally don't use LBC that much, just to cash out my coins occassionally for expenses and vice versa, but tier 0 is just impossible to use right now unless you create multiple accounts which goes against their ToS.

In case if people open multiple accounts they will be banned? They have option to monitor the IP logs of every registration?

But 20K limit can be obtained by submitting our passport which is not a big deal if someone being legit with the source of bitcoin obtained.

This LBC verification is killing me... I tried to verify tier 2 for the two times and both of the times it got rejected because of the fu**ing selfie.
I think I can guess what was the problem. I didn't have any beard in my ID photo but now I got a long beard. It seems the person who is in charge of the verification can't match my face as me in both ID and selfie.

My tier 1 limit is over by 185% and now I'm having tier 2 verification issue - I'll just not cut out my beard for this verification. I'm angry >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

When did you tried the verification process,they have some issues in the verification process due to long queue to get verified in the last month so this might be the reason why you got rejected.Even myself got verified in the second attempt after a week from the first attempt to get verified for tier 2.So you may need few more attempts to get verified or you have to clean shave and try it. ;D

He already submitted for 2x and he wouldnt want to be striked with 3x rejection and as you had read that he wont cut that awesome beard of his just for that verification so this will just matter of decision if he would sacrifice it up. lol

So far i dont have any problems with their verification process yet ive been approved with one attempt.They are really just keen with face details but its impossible for that support cant able to determine a face with bear or without ? hahaha

Like I mentioned it depends on when he tried to get verified.If he done that in the past month then imagine situation of what I had mentioned.

If this is happened in this week then he is supposed to contact support team for further details about why he got rejected.

@zhekinsp
I tried to verify about 5 days ago and when I got rejected 2 times then I've contacted support. IIRC, then after 2 days, they replied with the same verification link I used before. But I haven't got the time to do the verification for the 3rd time.


@carlfebz2
You guessed it right. I won't be sacrificing my beard so soon for this verification process.
That's why I asked my younger brother for help to create a new account in his name (he didn't had an account before) so that I can do some transaction when I need it until I trim my beard at least.

If you aren't obfuscating any details, you're risking closure of both your accounts, I think I'd keep this to myself.

Get yourself verified soon after creating the account with your brother's identity for tier1.Then you have chances of finding trades but newbie with no trade history is going to be tough to find trades.Better sacrifice your beard dude. :D (just for sarcasm)

Strange. I got verified all the way to Tier 2 in about the same time it took me to find out it was required, take new docs and trim them to submit. Tier 1 I got within minutes, and Tier 2 within the hour. And I was good to go as usual. In fact, I never have any problem verifying except when the platform doesn't support documents from my country. And I actually look quite different from most of my IDs, but I think face recognition probably ignored facial hair, for example.

@akamit You really don't want to get both accounts blocked. How old is your trading account?

@zhekinsp You don't need any amounts to reach any tier, you can verify any time, even a new account can.

Seems you are lucky,for me it takes 2 week to get their approval after submitting all the documents so it maybe based on queue,if there is no pending documents you will be approved straight away or it may take time.But never had issues with facial recognize.

Localbitcoins have changed their policies a number of times in all their years of existence. The fact that they have tried to enforce these compliance regulations is why they have been able to survive in so many countries without much of a hiccup. Despite what the centralized exchanges would have you believe, these p2p exchanges are the backbone of the crypto space.

Although, I will be moving away from them because of the heavy documentation..

Same happen to me I submit documents and all cleared within few minutes because I also don't want to lost my account as its worth to me so if some one serious in his work then surely he need to complete these all because now many exchanges also doing these formalties as day by day authorties forcing them for this.

It depends on everyone's trading activity and their need of converting into fiat.For people like me it is important to have since I am doing trading on it but if someone rarely convert into fiat then it may not require to verified for Tier 2 or more.

I haven't done anything wrong that my account or my brother's account will get blocked. I have my account (almost 3 years old) and my brother created a new account (some days old)... That's it! Both accounts are Tier 1 verified with our own personal info and my account will be Tier 2 verified soon enough when I'll trim my beard I guess.

What I actually did is just asked my brother for a favor which is... "I'm sending you some satoshis and you make a local exchange for me; I'm having an issue with my account for now".

I hope, to ask for a favor to my own brother isn't a crime in the eyes of LBC.

Today i received an email from local bitcoins

Why is that ? I am already verified at Tier 1. My trading volume does not exceed the limit of Tier 1. So why should i update to Tier 2 ?
Other people also got such emails ?

Possibly LBC is sending emails selectively to its users because I haven't received such email yet while I need Tier 2 verification to use their service.

or maybe LBC is sending emails in batches and I may receive later; this can be a reason also why I haven't received yet.

Localbitcoin has been a reliable exchange for over the years, but nowdays is impossible to trust anything and i don't trust localbitcoins with my KYC documents, what if happens like Binance? and then my KYC end up on some chinese telegram group?
I recommend everyone to withdraw your coins immediately and storage on your wallet, not your keys not your coins

Longshot here...
Is your transaction volume over the limit? Transactions, not trade!
There was a case like this on reddit and it might be possible but there was zero-confirmation or feedback it was caused by this!

Drop support an email, we can only guess here after all

Again my Tier 1 verification got rejected, still don't know the reason. It's really a pain now.
I trimmed my beard and then tried to verify and got rejected again - so now I don't know any possible reason(s).

Believe me or not, whenever I do KYC in any exchange my heartbeat rises to the maximum by thinking only one thing "what may happen in the future with my ID? Am I safe?".

Authorities force platforms to comply with KYC thingy and the platforms force us to do so but authorities don't assure us that our docs will be safe... Do they?? I don't know about it.

This is big concern and you not alone in this many others also feel like this but now as authorities are doing we have to do this I also was happy but suddenly have email from Localbitcoins and they rejected my verfication now asking for new documents feeling very bad but still positive and hoping for clear this all in next few days.

So your documents are rejected by local bitcoins ? However i tried to verified Tier 2 as they block my access to buy/sell bitcoins. I upload my documents and it took only 15 mins to get myself upgraded to Tier 2.  :)

I have contacted support (they prompted me to contact) yesterday after unsuccessful verification.

And they replied today,

Let's see what happens next. How long I have to tolerate the pain of doing KYC over & over again.

I submitted my NID and the card is in my local language with few things in English... wondering if this is the reason. But they wrote that they accept NID from my country.

---

Yesterday they have updated the TOS & Privacy. Those who don't know yet may want to give a read.

In most of the cases we have no choice or alternatives but to do the KYC. We have to trust these sites and hope that they will not misuse our documents. The only safety we can take is not to submit the documents on new untrusted sites like new exchanges or new ICO etc. It is ok to submit documents on local bitcoins.

Do you have bitcoins balance in your localbitcoin account ?  :o

Why not try with your passport which may make the verification process get succeed. :)

But I want to let you know something,you may have to wait too long for every response from the localbitcoin staff because they respond to the ticket on queue basis and for me it took almost 4 days to get response from them for one of my report.

No, I don't have any balance there...


I'm having a tough time I guess. Last month my passport expired and now facing verification difficulties. Next few months I don't have plan to issue my new passport, so it is not an option anymore.

I'm aware of their support delay, they say it may take them 5-7 days to respond due to the unusual amount of tickets. Probably, most of the tickets are related to the verification process which is the reason for this delay if I'm not wrong.

Even disputed trades goes into this queue that is why the things get clogged and take too long to get a response.

Since you don't have any balance left on your account then you are not in any serious problem but if you are in emergency need of using localbitcoin then try register new account from different IP or new account also will get suspended until your old account gets restore.

No, I'm in serious problem because I use LBC regularly to cash out in my local currency and now I'm having difficulty in doing so.

As I mentioned before, my brother opened an account and I used once as help from him but now my brother's account is also blocked due to Tier 1 verification.
There is a catch though, my brother's Tier 0 limit is available, yet LBC is asking for Tier 1 verification and blocked the account. My brother said he will do the verification when he will get time.

So all you can do now use a new device which never gets registered on lbc site with VPN and register with a random name,so that you can trade upto 1000Euro once you exhaust it then you have to go with new account.I hope your verification process will be speed up.

Finally, I got verified to tier 1 after waiting for over a month and lots of pain.

My guess was right, they were just can't match me as me by comparing my ID and Selfie... I think they should use a magnifying glass, what do you say guys?  ;D

If you in Africa Like me , We just got screwed Again,
Address verification is hell here !!! not because we don't want to, but the system is non existent
Im tier 1 verified current volume is 13000$ Eur But they need tier 2 before I can trade again.

Hehehe, Teir 2 in virtually impossible here,
1. Bank statement are issued with the banks address,
2.Water Bill are issued in the names of the landlord and most areas we use boreholes
3.Electricity is prepaid, no receipts, justs a scratch card, you load in into the meter
4. Maybe google maps

what is the best alternative to this , I can convince my traders to move with me, since all we want is some kind of escrow.

Still many options like your birth certificate school admition papers IDC or Driving License like these I don't think there is no paper with your address because its real part of life for any one.

1. Proof of vehicle registration, insurance or inspection if it was done recently? Maybe that would go through?
2. Cheap phone contract bill?

If you need any help with anything at Local Bitcoins, I suggest calling/texting this number (Elena from customer support): +358456106560

I would suggest that people chack out and switch to localcryptos.com
There is NO KYC and service is not centralized.

i think i traded too much..

https://i.imgur.com/iBu49rk.png


now i cant trade anymore..

i am since august trying to verify to tier 3..

Now recently they are very stick about this so without verification no one can do any trade on this site you must pass this then able to trade.

Use the website suggested above (https://localcryptos.com/), you won't have to go through any verification.

The liquidity may not be as high as Paxful's or LBC's but that shouldn't be problematic as long as you're sticking to payment methods that everyone uses (SEPA, PayPal, Skrill etc.)

You need to pass liveness test to get verified for tier 3,if still have issues after following all the instructions then create support ticket and explain what you are facing in verification process.most people got successfully few attempt jope this might happens with you as well.

If some one is from these countries then he need to wait for next update as now they have some more stick policy for these countries if you in hurry then delete your account today I have email from them about this.
Customers residing or otherwise located in the following countries are required to have an enhanced due diligence process. The countries are defined by EU commission: Afghanistan, American Samoa, The Bahamas, Botswana, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guam, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, US Virgin Islands, Yemen. The process to activate the account will be introduced in the near future. If you’re not willing to wait for your account to be activated, you can withdraw your bitcoins by deleting your account.

These countries have restrictions for crypto usage that is why they are restricting the traders from these countries?

Manye people trading from banned countries for long term why there is sudden changes on their terms of service?

Its because localbitcoins.com is Finland based company recently EU Commission done some stick policies for these countries so they have follow them for stay in.

No, it's more that users from these countries are perceived to be 'high-risk' from an AML and/or sanctions' compliance perspective.

 you can withdraw your bitcoins by deleting your account

localbitcoin blocking bitcoin from all those people
minimum 15 days
and in 15 days we will see ...
I do not live in those countries. and I also have my bitcoin blocked.
"Close the account and we'll give it back to you"
"just kidding"
days and days waiting and my bitcoin are still in localbitcoin
Will there be localbitcoin reinvested bitcoin from users to bank mode and now blocks accounts to get time?

By selfie, what do you mean? Just a photo like passport photo or photo of you holding sticky note with latest date etc?

Holding of sticky note with latest date is required for clear this all otherwise they will reject your verification now something more stick you can check on site.

My last transaction with LocalBitcoins was more than 2 years, cash with no KYC, those were great days!
I wonder if their trade volume has gone down since they modified their service so much.

https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/ALL

It's of course difficult to say what's the real volume outside LBC and how much higher would LBC's volume be without all the KYC, banning cash trades and banning of the entire countries from using their site.

Thanks for this data.
It's quite obvious their trade volume is down since last October.

True, but regular exchanges also see less real trading volume ever since the bubble burst in January 2018.

And as you pointed out, it's more difficult to see what trades actually happen outside the LBC system. I still recall seeing trades that give you their contact information, where you can then just take discussions offline and still use cash without KYC. Those trades would have happened with escrow over LBC but now not anymore. So could be that it's not a case of people moving away from LBC, simply taking trades outside the system.

The problem is that it's now impossible to filter for local traders, and there is no way to search the "terms of trade" sections. I gave up trying to randomly search through offers since the chances of finding cash traders who were also local and listed contact info was incredibly low.

And when it comes to purely online trades, the incentive to use their escrow service is really high due to fraud. For these reasons, I think that trading outside the escrow system is rare.

I really miss the old LocalBitcoins. It used to work just like Craigslist, with lots of people using it for local listings while dealing P2P outside of escrow. There's nothing "local" about it anymore. I've since moved on to LocalCryptos. It's nowhere near as active as the old LBC, but I managed to make one cash trade recently -- for a good price too.

I guess I'm not seeing the problems where you are -- it's arguably easier to find local traders in one of my locations now. Many more online traders (and our online payments are 24/7) than even a year ago and even more than during the 2017 boom. I WILL say that since KYC though, we've had many, many more foreigners on LBC (using local bank accounts).

But you're right in terms of visibility. In my other EU location, the same locals (cash) are still around but they don't appear on searches anymore. I think if you get in now as a new person, you simply can't find local traders unless you join local forums too (in local languages).

what is the liveness test ? how can we pass it ? I stuck at tier 3 liveness test ?

Hopefully this will help you to understand what is this liveness test and how this works https://www.liveness.com

What does it mean you're stuck?
You need to take the test, be careful as I remember it gives tons of errors on iOS (don't know if they fixed it) and follow the instructions on the screen, prepare for a lot of heard turning around until the whole ordeal is over. And have your id next to you once you decided to take it.
T3 was supposed to be manually reviewed, have you submitted (if they asked for) extra documents and you have not received a word from them?

A few details might help us help you  :)