Thank you guys. Ye all are truly amazing! I really appreciate the education! I have signed up for localcoinswap so I guess now I have to find someone "trustworthy" to send him/her $ and hope that they'll deposit the equivalent bitcoins into my localcoinswap account/wallet. It's a "coin toss" really...coz I can send the $ through say "western union" to someone, they get the dough and never deposit the coins in my wallet! Is there any way to minimize my risk here? Thanks
Actually, it's hard to say that all your transactions will be smooth but if you are using localcoinswap, you can check the thumbs up they have.
The more thumbs up, the better. I guess.
And also, they have secure escrow protection, so at least relatively safe.
But you can check other crypto exchanges that don't require KYC like crex or unnamed.
Depends on which coin you want to trade as they have their own list of trading pairs.