Whether you’re a freelancer who needs to sell your bitcoins that you received as payment for a finished project to pay your bills or you’re just not that bullish on the bitcoin price over the next few months, it’s always important to plan where you’re going to sell your bitcoins before you actually go through the process. Although Bitcoin is a frictionless payment system that has the potential to revolutionize e-commerce as a whole, the reality is that you still need to interact with the legacy banking or cash system if you’re going to be able to convert your bitcoins to dollars, euros, or some other form of fiat currency. Let’s take a look at the most secure options you can turn to when it’s time to sell bitcoin on the open market.
Online Exchanges
Generally speaking, you’re usually going to want to stick with an online option when it’s time to sell your bitcoins. Although there are definitely options available in your local area through platforms, such as LocalBitcoins, the reality is that those solutions create a few different extra problems that you may not want to deal with right now. You can never be too sure of who you’re dealing with when you decide to trade bitcoins p2p, and it usually makes sense to stick with an established exchange if you’re going to sell your bitcoins today.
Having said that, it’s important to remember that online exchanges are not all created equally. There have obviously been extreme problems with exchange such as MtGox in the past, so you need to do your homework before you decide to use any Bitcoin trading platform. Security should be your main concern when it comes to finding out where to sell bitcoins, so make sure you’re choosing a platform that offers enhanced safety features such as two-factor authentication and cold storage of customer funds.
CEX.IO Now Allows Dollar Deposits
Although CEX.IO is mainly known for letting users trade GHS on their platform, they are now also allowing users to deposit USD and trade that fiat currency against GHS, BTC, and LTC. This trading platform has one of the most paranoid setups when it comes to the security of user funds, but that should definitely be viewed as a good thing. Not only do they nearly force users to use two-factor authentication when they first sign-up for an account, but they’ll also send you an email whenever someone tries to login with your user credentials. This kind of instant notification acts as a sort of alarm for your account where you are instantly aware that someone is trying to break into your CEX.IO wallet. This is the kind of exchange that should be used when you’re trying to place bitcoin sell orders in a secure manner.
Looking Forward: Decentralized Exchanges
In addition to the centralized online exchanges that people use to trade bitcoins today, there is also the prospect of decentralized exchanges becoming the trustless, secure option of the future. There are many different forms of decentralized exchanges in development right now, and the blockchain-based solutions will be rather slow when compared to centralized servers. Having said that, these could still be interesting options for people who are not looking to daytrade their bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies on a second-by-second basis. These kinds of solutions have the potential to be as secure as Bitcoin when it comes to trading between cryptocurrencies, but they will still carry counterparty risk when it comes to trading any real-world asset such as dollars, euros, gold, or silver.