A friend was telling me about: "The mycelium app
has a marketplace section where you type your zip code and you can meet up with local buyer/sellers of BTC to
do a cash transaction in person.
This is both unsafe and can be stressful meeting up with local buyer's and sellers around you for transactions that can easily be carried out safely with the help of third party apps that function like escrow services.
what were your experiences? I do worry about possibly you making a transfer and the
buyer, for example doesn't fulfill their agreement? Its not as if you could reverse the transfer.
It is possible to always meet people that want to defraud you, that is receive your bitcoins without paying you for it when you use some applications, but good applications that offer P2P services always try to ensure that the occurrence of this is reduced. They hold the coins after you have sent it to a buyer, until you receive payment for it and then they release it to the buyer.
Doing a physical buying or selling of bitcoin is not advisable with strangers, that is people you just meet. If you must transact physically, it has to be with someone that you are familiar with and can trust.
If the transaction of bitcoins was mainly physical, we will record a very high number of theft.