How P2P settlement actually works, from escrow to released funds

Escrow is the whole trick

P2P works because the platform holds the crypto in escrow while the fiat moves outside it. When a buyer opens an order against your sell ad, the USDT leaves your available balance immediately and sits locked. The buyer pays you through a bank or wallet, marks the order paid, and only your release moves the escrowed crypto to them. Neither side can take both assets at once, which is exactly the point.

Understand what escrow does not cover: it cannot see your bank account. The platform knows the buyer clicked "paid"; only you know whether money actually arrived. That gap is where every payment-proof scam lives, and it is why the release click is the single moment of real risk in the whole flow.

The lifecycle of an order

A normal sell order moves through these states:

• Opened: buyer takes your ad, escrow locks your crypto, the payment window starts counting.
• Paid (claimed): the buyer marks the order paid. Treat this as a claim, not a fact.
• Verified: you confirm settled funds in your own account, with a matching sender name.
• Released: you release escrow; the platform records completion and updates both reputations.
• Disputed (the exception): either side can raise a dispute; moderators decide based on the evidence logged in the order, which is why keeping everything on-platform matters.

Why completed-only accounting matters

For your books, only completed orders are real. Cancelled orders often leave near-duplicate records when a buyer retries, and in-progress orders may still fall through. If you count anything other than completed orders in your profit, your numbers will drift from reality. This is also how a proper ledger treats your history: every status stored for the record, only completions counted in the totals.