Selling crypto, the complete guide

Turning a digital asset into usable money is a six-step operation, four of which happen off the blockchain. Most incidents do not come from technical difficulty but from preparation done in the wrong order: opening an order before verifying your identity, pasting an address before choosing the network, entering an IBAN that is not in the right name.

This guide walks the whole chain. Each section says what to prepare beforehand and what can fail.

1. Choosing what you sell, and where from

The first decision is not "which asset", it is where the funds start.

If your assets sit on an exchange you will need to withdraw. That withdrawal has a fixed cost, a delay, and sometimes a hold after a password change or the addition of a new address. Check those three points before creating an order, because the rate locks at creation, not when you are ready.

If your assets are in a wallet whose keys you hold, there is no withdrawal, but you carry responsibility for transaction fees and network choice.

Two practical consequences:

• Prepare the withdrawal first, the order second. The reverse order misses the rate window.
• Check the asset's minimum deposit. Every asset has one, published on its page. Below it, fixed costs exceed the point of the operation.

2. Choosing the network

This is the decision that produces the most expensive mistakes, and it is only reversible in some cases.

The same asset often circulates on several networks. USDT exists on Tron, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and BNB Smart Chain. The token is identical, sending cost varies by a factor of fifty, and deposit addresses are not interchangeable.

Three rules:

1. Choose the network before copying the address, not after. A 0x address is valid on six different networks: pasting the right address on the wrong network produces a successful transaction in the wrong place.
2. On memo networks — XRP, Stellar, TON — the memo is as mandatory as the address. Without it the deposit arrives with no identity attached.
3. Required confirmation counts vary. Two on Bitcoin, twelve on Ethereum, twenty on Tron, a hundred and twenty-eight on Polygon. That number sets your wait.

Per-network detail is in Choosing your deposit network, and the two most common failure modes in USDT on TRC-20 or ERC-20 and The missing memo.

3. Choosing how you want to be paid

The payout rail determines timing, fixed cost, and the information you will have to supply. The same amount sold can land in eight seconds or three business days on that choice alone.

The main families:

| Family | Examples | Typical timing | What you supply | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Instant transfer | SEPA Instant, PIX, NIP, Faster Payments | Seconds to minutes | IBAN or local identifier | | Classic transfer | SEPA, ACH | Next business day | IBAN or routing + account | | Mobile money | M-Pesa, MTN MoMo | Minutes | Phone number | | Wallet | PayPal, Wise, Revolut | Minutes to hours | Email or identifier | | International wire | SWIFT | 2 to 5 business days | IBAN, BIC, address |

Two points few services explain:

• Some very popular payment methods cannot receive funds. iDEAL, Bizum, BLIK and Zelle are collection rails, not disbursement rails. That is not an integration gap, it is their nature; the detail is in Why some payment methods cannot receive funds.
• The destination account must be in your name. No payouts to third parties, whatever the explanation. That is a regulatory obligation, not a preference.

4. Verify your identity before, never during

Identity verification is the one step you can do in advance, and the one that most often blocks orders.

The level required depends on your cumulative amount over a rolling period, not on the isolated operation. Tiers are published on the identity verification page.

What makes a file fail, by frequency:

• an ID photo that is blurry, cropped, or has glare across the readable zone;
• a proof of address older than three months;
• a name differing from the payout account's, even by one first name;
• a document in an unsupported language, with no translation.

Doing this while a rate is running is the surest way to miss the window. The guide Identity verification and compliance sets out what is asked and why.

5. Quote, deposit, wait

The quote freezes a rate for a limited time: fifteen minutes for a volatile asset, thirty for a stablecoin. That duration matches the typical confirmation time of a correctly priced send.

During that window:

• Send with normal transaction fees, not the lowest tier. An underpriced transaction waits in the mempool and overshoots the window.
• Do not retype the amount by hand. Use the copy button.
• Check whether your origin platform deducts its fee from the amount typed or adds it. That is the leading cause of underpayment.

If the deposit lands after expiry nothing is lost: the order is re-quoted at the current rate and you must accept the new amount before any payout. If the amount received differs from the one announced, it is processed as is at the locked rate. Every case is detailed in Underpaying an order.

6. Receive, and check

The payout goes out as soon as confirmations land and checks pass. What happens next is no longer ours: the receiving bank applies its own display cycle.

Three things to do on receipt:

1. Compare the net received to the net announced. They must be identical. A gap is an anomaly to report, not normal variation.
2. Download the receipt. It carries the timestamp, quantity disposed of, network, net received and the full fee breakdown. It is the document your accountant will need.
3. Keep the export. Disposal tax is computed on data only you hold in full; see the tax guide.

How long it really takes

The total is not the sum of the announced timings: the steps do not all run in series. Compliance checks run while confirmations accumulate, and the payout goes out as soon as the slower of the two finishes.

Here are three realistic scenarios, assuming identity verification is already done.

| Scenario | Network | Rail | Realistic total | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | USDT to a euro account | Tron, ~1 min | SEPA Instant, seconds | 2 to 5 minutes | | Bitcoin to a euro account | Bitcoin, ~20 min | SEPA Instant, seconds | 20 to 30 minutes | | Bitcoin, ordered Friday 6pm | Bitcoin, ~20 min | Classic SEPA | Monday morning |

Three lessons come out of that.

The rail dominates the long delays. The gap between 25 minutes and two days comes from the payment scheme, not the blockchain.

The network dominates the short ones. Between Tron and Bitcoin the confirmation gap is twenty minutes; it becomes invisible as soon as the rail takes a business day.

Verification dominates everything else. An incomplete file can add hours or business days, and it is parallelised with nothing: until it is resolved, no step advances.

That is why the best timing optimisation is neither the network nor the rail: it is having everything prepared before creating the order.

The checklist before you start

• [ ] My funds are accessible, with no withdrawal hold in force.
• [ ] I know the network I will use, and the memo if one is needed.
• [ ] The amount is above the asset's minimum.
• [ ] My identity verification is already complete for this amount tier.
• [ ] The destination account is in my exact name as shown on my ID.
• [ ] I have read the chosen rail's typical timing and it suits me.

That list avoids nearly every incident. The rest — network congestion, a manual check, a degraded rail — does happen, and is tracked from your order.

Articles attached to this guide

• Selling bitcoin and getting paid by SEPA transfer walks these six steps on one case, with the real duration of each.
• Underpaying an order covers every gap between what the order expects and what it receives.
• Headline rate versus effective rate gives the method for comparing two offers honestly.
• The missing memo covers the one class of deposit error that can be permanent.