What a no-account crypto swap is and how it works

The short version

A no-account swap, often called an instant exchange, turns one coin into another without a sign-up. You say what you send and where the new coins should go. The exchange gives you a deposit address made for that one order. You send your coins there, the exchange swaps them, and it pays the new coins straight to your address. There is no balance to keep and nothing to withdraw afterwards.

foldoy's swap page is a front end for several of these exchanges. It asks each one for a rate, shows the best, and opens the order with that exchange through its API. The coins go from you to the exchange and from the exchange to you.

Step by step

1. Quote. You pick two coins and an amount. Each exchange answers with how much it would pay out, after its fees and its cost of sending the coins to you.
2. Order. You give the address that receives the new coins, and optionally a refund address for the coin you send. The exchange checks that both look valid for their networks.
3. Deposit address. The exchange creates an address for this order. A few networks, like XRP and TON, also need a memo or tag with the payment so the exchange can tell deposits apart; the trade page shows it when one is needed.
4. Confirmations. You send the coins. The exchange waits until the network has confirmed the payment, so it cannot be reversed. How long that takes depends on the chain: about 10 minutes per Bitcoin block, about a minute for USDT on Tron, about 20 minutes before received Monero can be moved.
5. Exchange. The exchange trades your coins for the new ones using its own liquidity or the markets it connects to.
6. Payout. It sends the new coins to your address and the order is finished. The trade page on foldoy follows the exchange's status and updates by itself.

Who holds the coins, and when

From the moment your deposit arrives until the payout leaves, the exchange holds your coins. For most swaps that is somewhere between a few minutes and an hour. During that window you rely on the exchange to finish the order, which is why each exchange's terms and reputation matter.

foldoy is never in that chain. The deposit address belongs to the exchange, and the payout comes from the exchange. foldoy shows quotes, opens the order through the exchange's API, and shows its status. It earns a fee that is part of the rate.

Where the rate comes from

The amount you see is what the exchange expects to pay out. It already has three costs taken out: the exchange's own margin, foldoy's fee of 0.4%, and the network fee the exchange pays to send you the new coins. That last one depends on the coin. For a Bitcoin to Monero swap on 6 November 2026, ChangeNOW counted 0.009 XMR for it. The network fee for your own deposit is separate, and you pay it from your wallet.

The rates on foldoy float, so the final amount is set when the exchange swaps your deposit. Fixed vs floating rate swaps covers what that means for you.

How it compares

An exchange with an account, like the large ones that list hundreds of markets, asks for ID when you sign up. You deposit into a balance it holds, trade, and withdraw. It holds your coins for as long as they sit in the account.

A decentralized exchange runs as code on a blockchain, and your own wallet signs each step. For coins on one chain, like tokens on Ethereum, that works without anyone holding your coins. Swaps between separate chains, like Bitcoin to Monero, need extra machinery such as atomic swaps or cross-chain networks, and often a wallet that can attach a memo or sign special transactions.

An instant exchange sits between the two: no account and no stored balance, and any wallet can pay a plain address, but the exchange holds the coins for the length of the swap.

ID checks and risk controls

Swaps without an account still go through the exchange's own checks. Instant exchanges screen deposits and payout addresses against lists of addresses linked to theft, fraud and sanctions, often with blockchain analytics services. If a swap is flagged, the exchange can hold it and ask for ID or for proof of where the coins came from before it pays out or refunds. Each exchange describes this in its terms, and foldoy's swap page links to the terms of the exchanges it uses.

It can happen to any swap, so know it before you send. If it does, the exchange decides, and you talk to its support with your trade ID.

What can go wrong, and how to avoid it

• The wrong network. USDT exists on Tron, Ethereum, Solana and other chains. Sending it on one network to a deposit address made for another can lose it. Pick the exact coin and network in the list, and check the network in your wallet before you send.
• A missing memo. On networks that need one, a deposit without its memo cannot be matched to your order automatically.
• Too little. Each exchange has a minimum. A deposit below it cannot be swapped, and getting it back goes through the exchange's support.
• Too late. An order waits for your deposit for a limited time. Send soon after you open it.
• A wrong payout address. Coins sent to the wrong address cannot be recalled. Paste addresses, never type them, and compare the first and last characters.

Countries

Each exchange's terms list the countries it does not serve, and foldoy only offers you exchanges whose terms allow your country. That is why the swap box can show different exchanges in different places. In the US, for example, StealthEX is the one that takes swaps.

Records

An instant exchange keeps its own record of each order. foldoy keeps the order too: the addresses, the exchange's trade ID, and the IP address, browser and language it came from, which are deleted after a year. The privacy page has the details.

To try it, the BTC to ETH, USDT to BTC and ETH to XMR pages each show their own limits and timing, and How to swap Bitcoin to Monero without an account walks through one swap from start to finish.