Vetting a counterparty before you trade

Most P2P losses are preventable in the sixty seconds before you click accept. The goal is not certainty. It is to remove the counterparties who are obviously risky and to leave a record that you looked.

Screen the on-chain address

If you have the counterparty's receiving or sending address, run it through a checker before you commit. A good check answers three factual questions:

• Is it blacklisted? USDT issuers can freeze addresses at the contract level. A blacklisted address is a hard stop, not a discount opportunity.
• Is it sanctioned? Some addresses appear on official sanctions lists. Trading with them creates legal exposure for you, not just for them.
• When was it frozen, if it was? A dated freeze event is a fact, not an opinion. It tells you the address has real history behind it.

You can run this now: check an address in the checker. Treat a clean result honestly. No markers found is not a guarantee of clean funds; it means nothing we screen against has flagged it yet.

Read the platform signals

On the trade itself, weigh the cheap signals the platform gives you:

• Account age and completed trades. A fresh account moving large volume is a different risk than a two-year account with thousands of trades.
• Verified name. You will insist the incoming payment matches this exact name. Note it before you start.
• Price that is too good. A rate noticeably better than the market is bait, often for stolen funds that the fraudster needs to move fast.

Set your own rules and keep them

Decide your decline rules in advance, because you will not think clearly mid-trade:

• Payment name does not match the verified buyer name, cancel.
• Payment comes from a company account or a third person, cancel.
• Buyer pushes you off-platform or rushes the release, slow down.

None of this is paranoia. It is the difference between a trade you can defend and a trade you cannot. The counterparty who is clean will not object to any of it.