A seller offering USDT or bitcoin cheaper than the market is either someone with a reason (they need local currency fast, they are moving out of a position, they value your payment method) or someone who never intends to deliver. You cannot tell which from the price. You can tell from one question: will they lock the crypto before you pay? A real seller loses nothing by doing it. A scammer cannot, because there is no crypto.
Why the discount cannot hurt you inside escrow
On iEscrow the seller's crypto is held before you see the payment details, the amount is exact and unique to the trade, and the price is locked when the trade is accepted: it does not move with the market afterwards. If the offer was real, you got your discount. If it was not, there is nothing to pay because nothing was locked. The price stops being a risk and becomes just a price.
What a normal price looks like on a marketplace
- Listings show the publisher’s margin added to a reference price. A seller slightly above market is normal; a seller far below it with a reason to hurry you is the pattern to notice.
- A real discount comes with a method the seller wants (a specific bank, cash, a specific country), not with a request to pay first or to leave the platform.
- "Below market" plus "pay directly, the escrow is slow" is not a discount. It is the sentence before the loss.