P2P question

[Oshosondy]

Are there P2P users here? I am talking about users that are creating buy and sell P2P ads on crypto exchanges to make money. All I think is that they are using arbitrage to make money but which can be very wrong.

I have heard from someone that know someone making money from P2P but I did not ask question further because he is not the one that is making the money from the P2P but someone that he knows.

How are P2P users making money from trading?


Please, do not post if you are not creating P2P ads on crypto exchanges.

[OmegaStarScream]

Very doable and not risky when using stablecoins(aside from the payment method's risk of course) . You could place two ads. One for selling USDT for 0.86 eur/USDT, and another one for buying it lower than that. You could go to Binance P2P right now, and check both "sell" and "buy" ads and you will find some merchants doing both.

[HONDACD125]

Why do you think it's wrong, OP? You are not doing anything wrong; you are basically buying lower and selling higher, just like what @OmegaStarScream said. When you become a P2P merchant, you buy cryptocurrencies on one hand using your fiat capital, and then you sell what you are buying on the other hand, and get your capital back, but with some profit. If you are buying 1 USDT for 0.97 USD for example, you sell it back for 1.00 USD and get $0.03 profit on each coin, which means that if you are doing trades worth $1000 every day, you get $30 in profits, which isn't bad.

The only thing that can become problematic for you as a P2P trader or merchant is the account limit for you to send and receive fiat amounts because bank accounts mostly have a monthly or daily limit for how much you can send and receive, and once the limit is out, you have to wait for the next day to be able to make transactions again. For this reason, a P2P merchant will usually need to arrange multiple accounts to be able to continue trading if they are getting orders constantly.

[Zaguru12]

The only thing that can become problematic for you as a P2P trader or merchant is the account limit for you to send and receive fiat amounts because bank accounts mostly have a monthly or daily limit for how much you can send and receive, and once the limit is out, you have to wait for the next day to be able to make transactions again. For this reason, a P2P merchant will usually need to arrange multiple accounts to be able to continue trading if they are getting orders constantly.

That’s why you see most of them have many bank accounts details, you can never have be an arbitrage trader without having multiple accounts mostly fintechs because aside the daily limit of a thing there is sometimes network issue that can prevent one from using a certain bank and you need to actually have alternatives.

To the question of making money, I remember the early days of using one exchange with lower rate to buy and then going straight to another exchange with higher selling rates. This was simply easy with some local exchanges then

[OmegaStarScream]

Why do you think it's wrong, OP? You are not doing anything wrong; you are basically buying lower and selling higher, just like what @OmegaStarScream said. When you become a P2P merchant, you buy cryptocurrencies on one hand using your fiat capital, and then you sell what you are buying on the other hand, and get your capital back, but with some profit. If you are buying 1 USDT for 0.97 USD for example, you sell it back for 1.00 USD and get $0.03 profit on each coin, which means that if you are doing trades worth $1000 every day, you get $30 in profits, which isn't bad.

It's actually quite profitable (or at least this is how it looks like). Even at 0.01$. You just have to do this for a long period of time, and start with a decent capital to make sure you can fill most orders that users have.

The biggest risks are the payment methods involved...
You can do your best and only trade small amounts with users that has solid trust profile... but then, you also have the problem of the bank (or whatever payment method you're using) asking you questions about the origin of the funds. Wise, Revolut, etc. they all tend to do that. If they decide to unbank you, your business goes down just like that, and you'll have to find another way, or someone you trust you let you use his account.

[Cointxz]

As a P2P trader before. I can do profit by setting order with highest/cheapest price on payment method that is popular for micro transactions like Gcash since I have less competitors in there and the price is less competitive compared to the traditional bank transfers.

I do have a good daily profit back then from this micro-medium transactions. The only problem is it’s time consuming checking frequently sms notifications for pending orders.

This profitability depends on the P2P activity in your country. In my local currency, I saw lots of foreign trader especially Chinese doing P2P with our currency.

[BitMaxz]

You should have a gap when trading on P2P. The good thing is that you are dealing locally stable coins to local currency or your fiat to stable coin.

It is just like spot trading, where you can only make a profit if you buy low and sell high, and you will not make so much profit, or the impact when you make a profit will be different when you are only trading with a small amount.

Mine is when I sell my USDT on P2P; instead of dealing directly to someone from their list, I instead make an ads because I can offer higher and much more profit than just selling your USDT to the available offer listed from the P2P.

[DavidPham]

I think this might help:

1/ They are making money by taking advantage of the price spread between buyers and sellers (but this carries risk if you trade with people like that, as they may not actually own the account).

2/ They have multiple accounts for each payment method, then create ads to buy at a low price and sell at a higher price (this is something many people are doing).

3/ They are a reputable trader with a stable business income system and need to convert to crypto (for reasons like tax avoidance or to bypass bank oversight).

[Rockstarguy]

I think I have a little idea about this because I know someone who is into P2P exchange. One of the ways they make a profit in trading is that some of these traders buy their coins at a lower price and sell them at a higher amount. It is just like buying a coin for about $290 and selling it for $310. If it is a coin like Bitcoin and volatility takes place (increase in price), they are lucky to even realize more profit. I think this is one of the ways some traders make their profit in exchanges.

[DavidPham]

I think I have a little idea about this because I know someone who is into P2P exchange. One of the ways they make a profit in trading is that some of these traders buy their coins at a lower price and sell them at a higher amount. It is just like buying a coin for about $290 and selling it for $310. If it is a coin like Bitcoin and volatility takes place (increase in price), they are lucky to even realize more profit. I think this is one of the ways some traders make their profit in exchanges.

That’s not really how P2P traders operate. What you’re describing is closer to Spot trading.

[Ndabagi01]

Very doable and not risky when using stablecoins(aside from the payment method's risk of course) . You could place two ads. One for selling USDT for 0.86 eur/USDT, and another one for buying it lower than that. You could go to Binance P2P right now, and check both "sell" and "buy" ads and you will find some merchants doing both.

This looks the perfect example to tell someone and they feel convinced that this is how merchants of p2p make money off their marketing there. I usually think about that but always come to a conclusion that if they’re not making money off it, they would have stopped being a merchant but since it is profitable, they’re keen on staying and taking more p2p trade offers from customers. I have also come across some ads that the merchant will place  two ads  on the same sell order, but with your explanation it is clear that their buy order will be lower than both of their sell order price. They may just be pushing two ads on sell order to be at competition with their fellow merchants on who gets to be patronized the more.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

I only create sell ad sometimes but that's if the price of buyers ads are not comfortable for me to sell my USDt to them, I will create my ad and let is sit for some times or day until someone picks it up. I had interest of doing this p2p trade to make profit but I didn't continue with it because of some circumstances but I have studied the system to a large extent, how they make money is that they are going to buy your coin cheaper from you or anyone else but when they sell that same coins to you, it's at a slightly high price, different from what you sold it to them. So, they are buying at a lesser price and selling above the price they bought, for a 1 to 5 trades they might not make a huge profit but as they do huge volume of trades per day, their small profits grows big.

[cryptoaddictchie]

I have heard from someone that know someone making money from P2P but I did not ask question further because he is not the one that is making the money from the P2P but someone that he knows.

How are P2P users making money from trading?


Please, do not post if you are not creating P2P ads on crypto exchanges.

Ive tried it before on Binance. Yes its profitable but you need to have a lot of access to payment system like in our country you should have gcash, maya, seabank, and even banks to be able to cope with the demand. Honestly this is a good and profitable services. However I did stop it as I need funds and theres a ban pending on app in our country during sometime that makes me backout and safe keep my funds.

Sometimes the best way to profit is lower your price to competion yes, there much not been profits but if its a lot of customers the earning still good. If you set a high rate and no one will pick your ads.

[Gozie51]

I have not been an arbitrage merchant I have been close to few of them. It is a simple understanding, buy cheap and sell at higher price and then the difference becomes the gain. It is just as the other kinds of online trading, derivative, spots, forex etc, However, what I have noticed is that they have different accounts for fast and easy business, they are always online, they like to be swift to avoid volatility eating up their profit. This latter point makes them to prefer dealing in stablecoins because volatility has little or no effect on it.

[Findingnemo]

~
Please, do not post if you are not creating P2P ads on crypto exchanges.

I used to be a p2p trader in the LBC era and also I started my journey on Paxful and currently with Noones but I am not doing as I used to be, cause it is no more profitable since there are people who just want to sell with no margin at all that doesn't make sense, probably just using this for laundering money or something but it is highly difficult to make margin though.

[JeffBrad12]

Man.... the margin profit competition will be very fierce and there is always that guy who is willing to work overtime for 2 cents as a P2P merchant. If you think you got the edge that you can profit, sure just try it out.
Otherwise, try to look at the P2P market and calculate the margin profit first from the most used merchant. Don't expect it to become a sudden side hustle because it will be a lot of work.

[slaman29]

Not arbitrage, just spread. I didn't have the time to arb and you need huge funds for that. And a lot of time or a very good bot. It is profitable for some but very competitive.

I don't post anymore ads but I used to back when almost all platforms were easy to deal with fiat. My first ad was on localbitcoins and ironically that was also the first place I stopped putting ads (had the most scammers IMO).

BTW I wasn't doing spreads, just purely ads for selling. You actually get a tiny bit more than what its worth at exchanges. Buyers get it cheaper than on exchange, you get more fiat than on exchange. Win win!

[Wapfika]

Not arbitrage, just spread. I didn't have the time to arb and you need huge funds for that. And a lot of time or a very good bot. It is profitable for some but very competitive.

There’s some instance that it’s arbitrage since some P2P trader want an immediate funds on specific payment method. The image below is an example for arbitrage opportunity.



Roughly 0.38% profit if someone can complete this order using the specific wallet required.

[Futurexxx]

How are P2P users making money from trading?


Please, do not post if you are not creating P2P ads on crypto exchanges.

In my country Nigeria, we are used to p2p because that's how we exchange or sell off our crypto asset or usdt, since our government doesn't have an open door policy to cryptocurrencies, so for our account not to get freeze, we make use of p2p services in bybit, bitget, mex and some other exchanges that still operate p2p in the country.

To answer your question, how p2p merchant makes money, it's very simple because it's what I have done in the past, even before I knew of this forum. You buy at a lower price and sell at a bit higher price, like placing and adds of buying usdt to naira at 1385 naira, and later sell the dollar at 1400 or 1395 naira per dollar.

[slaman29]

Not arbitrage, just spread. I didn't have the time to arb and you need huge funds for that. And a lot of time or a very good bot. It is profitable for some but very competitive.

There’s some instance that it’s arbitrage since some P2P trader want an immediate funds on specific payment method. The image below is an example for arbitrage opportunity.

Not sure that qualifies as arbitrage, which in P2P trading as I understand it just takes advantage of higher demand in different regions, I still call this spread because every platform as I recall can have weird wallet requests. And this bigger spread (or premium price) for different wallet is usually because of increased risk to the counterparty.

Paypal had the best looking 'spread', but that's because of highest risk of chargeback, for example.