Legal way to sell Bitcoins in India and get cash in bank

After RBI’s (Reserve Bank of India) curbs on cryptocurrency where most of cryptocurrency exchanges in India stopped selling of cryptocurrencies for money, many Indian investors were left wondering what to do to cash out the Bitcoins (BTC) they had. In 2018 RBI declared cryptocurrencies as not a legal tender and barred banks to deal in it.

Today there is no direct way to sell your bitcoins and get the money in your bank account in India. Hence people holding Bitcoins who want to sell and get money in their bank are stuck. One way is to transfer your BitCoins to some international exchange wallet and sell there and get money in either some US or UK account or PayPal account (if you qualify to add PayPal). In most cases this is not an easy task for people with Indian ID proofs.

However, there is a way which lets you to sell your BitCoins and get the  cash in your bank account. It is called P2P trading. In P2P trading offered by exchanges like Localbitcoins or WazirX, buyer and seller are matched and cash transaction happens directly between seller and buyer. 

Cash out cryptocurrency in India 
In India you can use exchanges like WazirX that offer P2P trading to sell your Bitcoins or other cryptocurrency and get the cash in your bank or PayTM account.

  1. Create an account on WazirX
  2. Add your bank account, UPI and PayTM details
  3. If you are holding cryptocurrency on any other exchange or wallet, transfer it to WazirX using your WazirX address. Make sure to use correct wallet address.
  4. Once you see your Bitcoins in WazirX wallet, you are ready to trade 
  5. In order to sell Bitcoins you need to first convert it into USDT (another cryptocurrency like BTC) in WaZirX. Hence first trade in BTC to USDT
  6. Once you have got all BTC or any other cryptocurrency converted in USDT, you can go for P2P trade
  7. Go to P2P interface and create a sell order for USDT
  8. You can also check market to see buying offers so that you can create your sell order accordingly
  9. Once your order is placed, it will be matched with buyer(s)
  10. Mostly it takes less than 30 mins
  11. Once the order is matched, buyer will transfer money in your bank account and BTC are locked in escrow until you confirm the payment in WazirX
  12. Sometimes your trade if larger in size may be completed in 2-3 orders. Once you start getting payment(s), you need to confirm the payment so that WazirX can release BTC to buyer

So before 2018 where money was transacting through cryptoexchange to bank and vice versa, it is now a bank transaction between two people (buyer and seller) in which cryptoexchange is not involved. P2P exchange just connects buyers and sellers and keeps the digital coins in escrow till seller confirms that he has received the money and it is now OK to transfer the digital coins to buyer.