So not exactly sure if I'm in the right place, but I was wondering about localbtc trading, as far as what to look out for in event of scams and what not. From what I've seen it seems pretty safe, but always would rather be careful. If I'm in the wrong spot I do apologize, totally new here.
To be honest it's not that safe. It's a good place to do it since it's P2P and you're not dealing with a big company, but there can be a lot of scams on LocalBitcoin.
LocalBitcoins has a trust system so that you can deal with trustworthy members, but that always leaves the possibility of account farming open just like on Bitcointalk - so you end up with a lot of people buying accounts both for legitimate means (for getting trades easier) and for scamming people, so you can never be sure that even trusted users will be legit.
To keep yourself safe there's only a couple of rules which you need to follow:
-If you go face to face with cash transfer, make sure you meet up in a public place. You don't want to be messing around with someone really dodgy, they could well be a thief or other criminal, especially when they want the anonymity of cash.
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Don't sell for PayPal at all. PayPal is really reversible and easy to charge back - loads of people try to scam you with PayPal and even would buy trusted accounts to scam with larger amounts of money.
-If the person is uncomfortable with paying first and you're not meeting in person, you should find a trusted escrow to use as in many cases neither of you would want to pay first.