WazirX Peer to Peer exchange is a month old and I have been meaning to do a review since long. But WazirX was still working on improving the platform so I waited until it was fully ready. It seems it is very close now.
WazirX has replaced the entire model of P2P exchange. WazirX’s latest announcement boasts of an auto-matching open order book exchange. Many, including the founder Nischal Shetty had forgotten to mention it clearly.
“Happy to announce the world’s first open order book P2P” – Nischal Shetty, Co-founder and CEO of WazirX exchange said on twitter
He missed ‘Auto-matching’ bit in the description. WazirX by no means is the first open order book P2P exchange, seamless and automatic order matching with Open order book, perhaps. It hardly matters though. What I want to see or review is how it works and if it is any good for our readers. Ergo, lets go.
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Does WazirX P2P Solve a Problem?
After RBI closed one door for crypto trading, the exchanges opened another with Peer to Peer trading. Many exchanges have launched multiple cryptocurrency peer to peer exchanges but WazirX only offers USDT. Buy USDT from P2P and then buy other cryptocurrencies with USDT. If you want to cash out, sell your crypto for USDT and then sell USDT for INR using the P2P exchange.
With just one offering in the Peer to Peer exchange and the auto matching service for orders, the exchange has kept it simple.
Getting Started
You do not need to separately register to use P2P exchange but you can get yourself a username or what the exchange would like to call it fancily ‘XID’. We will talk about XID in detail in a bit. Stick around.
Once logged in, there is a separate tab for P2P on the website that you can use. On the mobile app, you must click on ‘funds’ to access the P2P exchange.
On the exchange window, we can see the open orders, a window to place orders and previous P2P orders. You can see five of my cancelled orders from the past.
WazirX USDT-INR P2P Exchange Page
XID
XID is short for WazirX Identity. If you click on ‘Add preferred seller/buyer’ on the order form, you can then write the XID of the seller/buyer who you want to trade with. Let us say you are chatting on telegram with someone who says I want to sell 100 USDT and you feel like buying it, you can enter that seller’s XID in the preferred seller and WazirX will try to match your order with that seller.
This is an innovative step when it launched, because the P2P exchange then, wasn’t open book. WazirX had too many buyers and too few sellers and WazirX decided the price of USDT, not the users. So it was mostly first come first served basis and hence, it helped those who made deals away from WazirX and then use the platform to trade.
It has changed now. Now, users can set their own price. A lot of thinking must have gone into developing it but the launch of open order exchange just simply made the XID less useful. Now you know exactly what price you can buy or sell USDT or place your own orders. Even then if you wish to trade with a friend, you can use WazirX.
Buying and Selling USDT
Honestly, USDT is very expensive on WazirX right now but for the sake of testing, I am going to do three quick tests.
- Buying USDT at available price
- Buying USDT by placing a limit order with a unique price
- Selling USDT at available price
Note that the very first order on WazirX to buy USDT can not exceed 16 USDT. Minimum order value should be Rs. 1000. So I am going to test with just 15 USDT.
Buying USDT at available price
I wanted to buy 15 USDT at a price for which a sell order was already available. I placed an order for 15 USDT at Rs. 72.8. As soon as the order was placed, it started matching with a seller. Once it was matched I received an email, SMS notification and a call from WazirX notifying me to complete payment in half hour, both in Hindi and English.
However, on the website I got one hour to make the payment into seller’s account.
After making the payment, I have to confirm as a buyer that the payment has been made. After the seller confirms the receipt of payment, I will receive the USDT. If the seller does not confirm for about 24 hours, the order will go into dispute.
After I made the payment, the seller did not confirm the receipt until after half an hour. One thing I find weird about WazirX is that I cannot place new orders until the existing orders are closed. That means I had to wait until this order was fulfilled to actually go forward and run Test #2 below.
Another thing to notice is that the entire amount sometimes will not be matched. Say if you wish to buy 100 USDT, your first match could only be of 50 USDT and then one for 30 USDT and the last one for 20 USDT. You can cancel the order in between, only the unfulfilled order will be cancelled.
Buying USDT by placing a limit order with a unique price
By the time I got to the second test, the price of USDT had already fallen. For the second test I am going to place an order with a unique price and see how much time it takes for the order to be fulfilled. By unique price I mean, a price for which there is no existing open order.
For this test, I am placing a Buy order for 15 USDT at a price of Rs. 72.15, it is unique and will sit on the top of the open order book.
The purpose of the test is not to determine if the P2P exchange works, we know it works by now. The purpose is to know how long does it take for the order to be matched.
The order matched in a Minute. Within a minute, I received an email, an SMS and a call from WazirX that my order is matched and I need to transfer the money to the seller.
One minute is a pretty good turn around time for matching an order. But it is also because my order was on the top of the open orders list. For people trying to sell or buy USDT at prices that are either higher or lower than the current price range, it may take more time.
Selling USDT at Available price
Thankfully, when I decided to sell USDT, I got to sell it back at good rates. I bought the 15 USDT at Rs. 72.8 and I am selling them at Rs. 72.9, as there is an open buy order for that amount.
As soon as the order placed, it started matching with a seller. Once it was matched I received no call or message from WazirX. I received a call, SMS and email after the payment was confirmed by the buyer.
You cannot cancel a sell order once it is matched, rightfully so.
The buyer has one hour to confirm the payment, but the confirmation came in 30 minutes.
If seller did not receive the money, he or she can choose to not confirm. The order will subsequently move to dispute. It seems the confirmation is awaited for 24 hours before going into dispute. This is a long time to wait.
I confirmed the receipt immediately after receiving the money in my bank account.
The Good and the Bad
WazirX P2P exchange is unique. They have managed to mix two different experiences together. The P2P exchange looks like a normal open order exchange and the users can place orders the same way they would on WazirX exchange.
At the end of the day, any exchange that can provide enough liquidity, security of funds and has a good support system is a better exchange so WazirX checks all the marks with KYC, security of funds with escrow and improving liquidity. The liquidity on WazirX seems better now than it was before. Remember the tweets from WazirX about having many buyers but no sellers?
ZERO wait time for USDT Sellers on WazirX P2P!
Sell orders of upto 13,000 USDT (~₹8.8 Lacs) will execute INSTANTLY!
Hurry up & sell your #crypto on WazirX P2P!
— WazirX (@WazirXIndia) July 18, 2018
That being said, USDT is being traded at premium price on WazirX, so many buyers may be discouraged to trade. If buyers are willing to pay a premium, the liquidity seems good to handle upto Rs. 20000 – Rs. 30000 worth of orders without much price fluctuations. But for higher value orders, you might have to wait.
WazirX Peer to Peer exchange also works on its mobile app, albeit like a responsive mobile website. Koinex Loop, Coindelta flux, Giottus and others work on the mobile website but not on the app. Instashift has a simple Android app that mimics their responsive website as well. Some users have complained that WazirX P2P on the app does not load.
Something I do not like about WazirX, when one buy order is in process I cannot place another buy order. “It is going to be enabled soon”, says Nischal Shetty, CEO of WazirX. There were a few ‘troublemakers’ misusing the facility, Shetty says, hence a new and better solution will be rolling out soon.
Another limitation, 15 USDT for first order should be removed as well. Now that there is no huge gaps in buy and sell orders, the first order should atleast have 100 USDT limit. Lastly, the 24 hour time for dispute is quite long. A buyer or seller should be able to raise dispute after only a couple of hours.
Final Word
WazirX peer to peer exchange is one more prominent name into the list of P2P exchanges in India. The experience in trading USDT was smooth and seamless. The P2P exchange does have glitches on the mobile app but on the website I didn’t face any issues.
A couple more rough edges to smoothen and I could see myself buying USDT on WazirX regularly. The USDT withdrawal fee however is very steep. A 10 USDT fee to withdraw is definitely discouraging for arbitragers. To compare, Bitbns charges the same fee, Coindelta charges just 3 USDT. Lets hope this is one of the kink that will improve as well.
The drawback of auto-matching is also partial matching. If you want to buy or sell a huge quantity, chances are that you will have to wait a while until the entire order is filled and make or receive multiple payments from many different people. Or else, find a trader outside WazirX, make the deal, and then place orders on wazirX using each other’s XID for matching.
If you want to quickly buy USDT, WazirX is a good solution. Would you give it a try? let us know in the comments below
