[jjmod]

not bitcoin, but I have some similar experience and thought I could share.

I got into dogecoin literally right after it launched (late 2013). There were zero exchanges that sold it. Hell, there wasn't even a place you could view the price.

The only way was basically had to find random people to trade with on a megathread on r/dogemarket. People would comment something like "Selling 50k doge for 10$" and you would just have to trust them. the "price" of a dogecoin was essentially just what recent listings were offering. Usually, you'd pay them on paypal and they'd transfer you the coins. It was pretty similar to localbitcoins.com if you've used it

In hindsight it was pretty sketchy, but i never got scammed luckily. the community was pretty small, and scammers were quickly outed on reddit

[kleer001]

I did that too, but I used an escrow service. Sure it just kicks the trust down a step, but it's ostensibly not either interested party.