How to Sell Your Crypto

We talk a lot about how to buy crypto – but here, we’ll talk about the other side of the coin (pun intended). Here’s how to sell crypto, and why you might want to.

What does selling crypto mean?

Remember when you bought your first cryptocurrencies? You would spend your US dollars, Euros or other fiat currencies to get yourself your very first Bitcoin (or other crypto of choice). Buying crypto with money is the most common entry point into the world of cryptocurrencies.

So where there’s an entry point, there must also be an exit, right?

There sure is: you could sell your crypto assets. While with buying you’d convert your money into cryptocurrencies, selling crypto is the exact opposite. You would get Dollars, Euros, Yens etc. in return for your digital assets. It’s often referred to as off-ramping, or cashing out, since you’d be getting cash and getting rid of your cryptocurrencies. We’ll take a look at how you can do this later, but first:

Why would you want to sell your crypto?

There are different reasons why you might sell your crypto. Many believe that cryptocurrencies are the future of money, and are unlikely to sell their digital assets. So why would you?

Let’s go over some of the most common reasons for selling.

Taking Profits

Thanks to their quick price changes and the incredible growth they’ve seen over the last decade, cryptocurrencies are often seen as a great investment. Much like traditional investments like stocks, at some point you may want to reap the return on your investment.

Do take caution though: Investing in crypto can be risky – always do your own research on this.

Pre-emptive Action

Expecting the price of cryptocurrencies to plummet? Selling your digital assets for fiat currencies like the US Dollar is one way to minimize your exposure. Selling your crypto is not the only option for this – you could also consider swapping your crypto assets into stablecoins, for example – but it’s a legitimate course of action for savvy traders with reliable market alpha.

Paying the bills

While the future for crypto is looking bright, with more and more adoption being seen, it still cannot be used for everything. Paying rent, taxes and many other things cannot be done with cryptocurrencies yet. If you end up getting in a tight spot, selling your crypto might even be necessary.

How to Sell Crypto

So now that we got down what selling crypto is, and the reasons why you might want to opt for this, let’s get into the most important part: how to sell your crypto.

For this, you have a few options.

Sell Your Crypto on an Exchange

Probably the most common method, crypto exchanges are generally speaking pretty easy to use when it comes down to selling your crypto. Once you’ve created an account with your private info (name, address, copy of ID), you can send the cryptocurrencies you want to sell to their platform. Once your cryptocurrencies have arrived, you can proceed to selling them for fiat currencies like the US dollar or Euro.

When using exchanges, it’s probably best to send the exact amount you’d want to sell there. Cryptocurrencies sent to an exchange are in their control and they can limit what you can do with it. For example, if you send 10 Bitcoin to the platform and only end up selling 1 BTC, you can likely not withdraw the remaining 9 BTC from the exchange immediately. There’d probably be a withdrawal limit that’s lower than 9 BTC.

Direct Trading

Both of these platforms are there to facilitate trading between two individuals – let’s say John selling Bitcoin to Mary. A Direct Trading platform would serve as an intermediary in the trade, meaning they’d help conclude it. After having agreed on the trade they’d make, John would send his Bitcoin to the Direct Trading Platform, and Mary her Dollars as well. The platform would then make sure they each then get their Bitcoin and Dollars respectively.

On paper, these platforms seem like a pretty sweet deal. In practice though, they can be quite time consuming. Not only do you need to wait till you’d find a buyer, the actual processing of the trade can take some time too on certain platforms.

Crypto ATMs

Similar to your good old bank ATM, you can use cryptocurrency ATMs to withdraw cash directly. Only difference is that you are withdrawing this from your cryptocurrencies, rather than your bank account.

As you can imagine, it’s a nice, easy and quick way to convert your digital assets into fiat money. Unfortunately though, not that many crypto ATMs exist – they’re pretty rare. For most, you’ll need to travel pretty far to find one. A crypto ATM will likely be pretty limited in which crypto assets you can sell, as well as the amount you can withdraw.

Sell Through Ledger

With Ledger, you are also able to sell your crypto with our partner Coinify.

This means that you can secure and control your crypto assets on your Ledger hardware wallet, while being able to sell your coins anytime you want through Ledger Live. It’s easily available to Ledger users, from a large number of countries.

The Ledger sell option, operated by Coinify, functions pretty similarly to the Ledger swap. You would send your amount of crypto securely through the Ledger sell to Coinify, after which they’ll send the promised amount of fiat money (US dollar, Euro etc) to the bank account you’ve indicated. Before doing so, you would choose the amount you want to sell, after which Coinify will indicate what you’d get in return for it. Of course, no crypto can be sold without your manual consent through your Ledger device.

Not only is it easily accessible, it’s easy to use as well with just a few button presses to be made. Most importantly: you’ll never need to sacrifice the ownership of your cryptocurrencies before you decide to sell them. It’ll stay in your hands up to the moment that you decide to sell your digital assets. And it’ll be kept secure through Ledger’s market-leading security solution.

Secure and Control Your Crypto – Seamlessly

Here’s our Chief Experience Officer, Ian Rogers, to explain exactly why it’s so important to secure your crypto – and why Ledger Nano is the safest option on the market.