LocalCoinSwap
4.9/10 total
A long-running P2P marketplace operated by TechHouse Ltd in Saint Kitts and Nevis that moved its trades to on-chain escrow: a multisig script for bitcoin and a smart contract on the other chains, with LocalCoinSwap holding only an arbitrator key rather than the coins. Signing up needs a username and email but no identity documents. The catch is that the terms let it demand KYC and AML documents at sole discretion, and because it is the arbitrator key it can withhold a signature until you comply; Trustpilot carries a recurring pattern of users reporting exactly that at withdrawal or in a dispute.
Scores
Weights are published in the method and applied identically to every entry.
For
- On-chain non-custodial escrow, so the platform cannot unilaterally spend a trade's funds
- No identity documents to register or to trade in the normal case
- Nine years operating with no publicly reported breach or seizure
- 300+ payment methods including cash, bank transfer and gift cards
- Escrow contract code for TRC20 is published on GitHub
Against
- Terms reserve the right to demand KYC and AML documents at sole discretion, and users report it landing at withdrawal time
- LocalCoinSwap is the final arbiter and its decision is stated to be final; it can withhold its escrow signature
- 1% maker fee is high and is normally passed into the price you see
- Only nine assets across three chains, so no monero and no bitcoin-adjacent privacy assets
- Email account required, no onion service, no JS-free path
Agent access 5/10
A REST API exists for offers and trades but needs an account and issued keys, and escrow release requires signing with your own wallet, so unattended completion means holding the trade keys in the agent.
Reported separately and not counted in the total. It measures what an autonomous agent can do unattended, not whether the service is safe to use.
Fees
1% paid by the offer creator
The user who posts the offer pays 1% of the completed trade, with a per-coin minimum (for example 0.000025 BTC, 0.005 LTC) and gas or network fees on top for ETH, TRX and token trades. Taking someone else's offer costs nothing in platform fees, so the 1% is normally priced into the maker's rate.
Specification
- Type
- Peer-to-peer
- KYC policy
- Risk-based KYC
- Custody model
- escrow
- Account required
- yes
- Assets
- 9
- Chains
- 3
- Operating since
- 2017
- Jurisdiction
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Onion service
- no
- Works without JS
- no
- Open source
- no
- Facts checked
- 2026-07-31
Links
Plain links, no referral parameters. Verify the domain yourself; phishing clones of every service in this table exist.