Everyday is a day for a new exchange in India. We have lost count quite honestly. Anyway, here’s a new one – InstaShift.
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What is Instashift
Instashift.io is a peer to peer exchange created by Kallidil Kalidasan and Rahul Chitale. The exchange offers a ‘Simple’ way to buy and sell Bitcoin. Both co-founders have told us they will be adding new coins soon. Instashift is registered in Estonia. Kali is the founder of Mindhelix and Mobscale, while Rahul headed the India business for Microsoft Azure. The current team is 7 members.
Instashift does not require KYC. Your orders are tracked only through your mobile number. Hence you can buy and sell crypto without going through the hassle of sharing documents. They can get away with it as they do not handle the fiat money, which is INR.
Peer to Peer Exchange
Much like any other P2P exchange, on Instashift too you can buy Bitcoin by placing an order and then transferring the money to seller’s bank account. The seller will confirm the deposit and BTC will be deposited to your wallet.
Instashift keeps the BTC for sale in an escrow to handle disputes in case a seller or buyer decides to go rouge.
Your sell order is placed only after you have transferred the BTC to your wallet or there is balance in the wallet.
Unlike other P2P exchanges, Instashift does not allow users to create orders at any price. You can either buy or sell BTC at the rate decided by Instashift’s algorithm. If you sell, your order will match with buyers as and when they place orders.
Fees
Instashift charges 1% fee to the Buyer and seller. However there are no network fees charged to transfer your BTC from Instashift to your own wallet
I tried to sell BTC on Instashift
Alright moment of truth. I have already heard from a couple of users who successfully bought BTC on Instashift, so it was time to try the opposite. Sell BTC.
To place a sell order I had to login with my Mobile number and the OTP sent on the phone.
I entered the amount of BTC to sell and the price was automatically calculated.
Note: The screenshots are not taken in a chronological order, hence the price difference.
Next, I was asked to transfer BTC to my Instashift wallet and provide my bank account for the buyer to transfer the money.
Instashift provides a Zero confirmation deposit, hence the deposit happened within a minute after the transaction hit the blockchain
Once the BTC is transferred, your BTC will be locked from withdrawal and you have to wait for a Buyer to place order. Your sell order will be matched with a buyer.
It could be one, two or multiple buyers until your entire BTC amount is sold.
Pretty soon, one of the buyers transferred the money to my bank account and I was asked to confirm if I received it. I confirmed I did.
That’s it. I sold part of my 0.0211 BTC to a buyer who bought it. Ofcourse Instashift took away 1% of my BTC as fees.
The second order that matched however did not move forward for until 50 minutes. In the final 10 minutes before the order would be cancelled automatically, I received an option to confirm the payment. I checked my bank account, it was there and clicked yes.
What happens if the Buyer or the Seller lies
Not everyone can get lucky, there are always a few scammers lurking around to try and exploit loopholes if any. In a case where the Buyer or the Seller lies about the payment, the order is moved to Dispute. When in dispute the Instashift team intervenes and verifies the transactions based on proofs received from Buyer/Seller and makes a decision.
Some Areas of Improvement
Instashift definitely has some areas to improve upon.
- It hard to figure out how to cancel an order if there are no matches or after initiating one
- No Social media links, it is a must if you need to grow.
- No ‘About Team’ page
- A list of previous orders
- Need to add Pending Withdrawals list and Withdrawal history
Have you tried Instashift yet? Let us know in the comments below how did it go.
Update: Deposit time and area of improvement updated.
Read more Reviews:
CoinSwitch Review: An Alternative To Exchanges for ‘Switching’ Coins
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