The P2P exchange platform Hodl Hodl enabled operations in El Salvador for the purchase and sale of bitcoin (BTC) using Banco AgrÃcola transfers as a means of payment. The first successful transaction between residents of the Central American country was reported this Wednesday, July 7, after a farmer posted an offer to buy $50 in bitcoin.
"We finalized the first and historic bitcoin transaction with a person in El Salvador using the Hodl Hodl person-to-person exchange platform," Dany Alos wrote on Twitter. The member of the company's technical support team added that hours earlier, a Salvadoran expressed his interest in buying BTC, so Alos himself made the sale.
https://twitter.com/DanyAlos/status/1412883891984248833
A week before the first transaction took place, Alos itself informed that the platform is now available for trading in El Salvador. So those interested in posting bitcoin offers for peer-to-peer trading must register on the platform just by entering their email. Then, after posting their offer to buy or sell BTC, they will be waiting for someone else to be interested in it and take it.
The Hodl Hodl P2P exchange specifies that it does not escrow its users' funds, so it does not require users to have balances in advance to create an offer or complete a transaction.
From there, the procedure is the same as that used by most P2P platforms for trading cryptocurrencies. If it is a sale, a user must send from their wallet, the amount in bitcoin they wish to trade. There, the balance will remain blocked while waiting for the transaction to be completed. Once the buyer has made the payment, the seller will release the amount in bitcoin that is in the deposit.
The peer-to-peer trading platform notes that it focuses on offering greater anonymity. This, because it operates without applying KYC regulations, better known as "know your customer", which companies usually use to verify the identity of their users to comply with current rules and regulations.
Now in El Salvador, in addition to Hodl Hodl, it is also possible to trade bitcoin on other P2P platforms, as indicated in the CriptoNoticias guide on where to buy and sell bitcoin in the Central American country. LocalBitcoins, LocalCryptos, and Paxful are available for Salvadorans, as well as centralized exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, and Bit2Me, among other options.
