Paxful: what happened, and where to go instead

Paxful is closed. It stopped conducting business on October 1, 2025, and the only thing it offered afterwards was a limited window for customers to withdraw whatever they still held. If you are looking for it, you need somewhere else to buy.

For most of its life Paxful was the widest peer-to-peer marketplace in the world. Buyers and sellers met directly, escrow held the bitcoin until payment cleared, and the payment method list ran past 300 options, including bank transfers, mobile money and gift cards. In countries where no exchange would open an account for ordinary people, that made it genuinely useful, and it was heavily used across Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

The ending was regulatory. Paxful Holdings pleaded guilty in December 2025 to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, to Bank Secrecy Act anti-money-laundering failures, and to a Travel Act violation. Sentencing followed on February 10, 2026: a 4 million dollar criminal fine from the Justice Department and a 3.5 million dollar civil penalty from FinCEN. Co-founder Artur Schaback had already pleaded guilty in July 2024.

If you used Paxful for local payment methods no exchange supports, Binance P2P is the closest working replacement and runs the same escrow model. If you were there because it was simple, Strike and Kraken are regulated alternatives with far narrower payment options but no counterparty to vet.