Peach Bitcoin Suspends Its Escrow Mode: 500 Franc Cap and New Rules for Sellers

Since September 1, 2026 the peer-to-peer marketplace Peach Bitcoin no longer co-signs the release of trades itself. The provider has suspended its escrow co-signature and is operating without it for the time being, while a Swiss supervisory body re-examines the compliance framework it has applied since 2022. Three things change immediately for you as a user: purchases are capped at 500 Swiss francs per order, the premium over the market price may not exceed six percent, and only those who meet certain conditions may still post sell offers.

The provider announced this in a blog post on August 31, 2026. The changes took effect the following day. According to the company these are temporary measures for the duration of the ongoing review, not a shutdown: the marketplace stays open, and dispute resolution inside the app continues to run.

What Peach Bitcoin changed on September 1, 2026: the escrow signature is suspended

The core of the change concerns the role Peach has played in every single trade until now. The marketplace had sellers deposit Bitcoin into a jointly controlled address and took part in releasing it to the buyer. It is precisely that participation which is suspended. The provider continues to describe itself as a non-custodial marketplace and as a financial services provider licensed in Switzerland, subject to that country's anti-money-laundering law.

What remains is the fee: according to the available reports, released trades still carry two percent. What also remains is the dispute route inside the app. Anyone who cannot come to terms with a trading partner can therefore still take that route.

Important for context: by its own account the provider has said it will defend the model without identity verification and seek a conversation with the supervisor before any final decision is implemented. No timetable for that decision is publicly known. That is the most awkward point for your planning: you do not know how long the present state will last.

What is a 2-of-3 multisig escrow, and which part of it now falls away?

Multisig means that a Bitcoin address requires several signatures before a balance can be moved from it. Escrow is the trustee principle: a third party holds the item until both sides have delivered. Together they make up the design that P2P marketplaces have worked with for years.

In the common implementation three parties each deposit a key, and two of them suffice for a payout. Buyer and seller hold one each, the marketplace the third. In the normal case the two trading partners do not need the marketplace at all: both sign together and the trade is done. The third key only counts when one side does not play along. The marketplace then decides which side it joins, and so creates the majority.

What is suspended now is the third key. As long as both trading partners agree, you will notice nothing of it. If one of them deviates, the mechanism that previously forced a decision is missing. That is the real difference, and it can be summed up in one sentence: the process now relies more heavily than before on your counterparty playing along.

Why this design was chosen in the first place

The reason is regulatory. Whoever controls someone else's balance alone is engaged in custody, and custody requires a licence in almost every jurisdiction. The two-of-three construction was an attempt to keep disputes resolvable without being able to dispose of the funds alone. That this very point is now the subject of a review shows how narrow the line is.

A 500 franc purchase cap and a maximum six percent premium: the new limits in detail

Two ceilings have applied on the buyer's side since September 1. The amount per order is capped at 500 Swiss francs. The premium, as it is known in marketplace jargon, may not exceed six percent. The premium is the percentage by which a sell offer sits above the reference price: at a reference price of 78,000 euros and a six percent premium you pay roughly 82,680 euros per Bitcoin.

Both limits pull in the same direction. The amount cap makes large purchases impossible, while the premium cap prevents the remaining sellers from turning thinner competition into high prices. In practice that means: what you used to settle in one order now breaks into several. And because the fee falls due on every released trade, the whole exercise tends to become more expensive.

According to the available reports the buyer's side remains accessible without identity verification. That is the most striking detail of the entire changeover: the pressure falls exclusively on the supply side, while access for buyers is left untouched.

Who may still sell? Identity verification, allow list and a vetted trading history

According to the available reports, only those meeting one of three conditions may still post sell offers: a completed identity verification, manual admission to an allow list kept by the provider, or a vetted trading history on the platform. KYC here stands for "Know Your Customer" and denotes a provider's duty to identify its customers, usually by way of an identity document.

Anyone who has not been through identity verification may in addition run only one active order at a time. That is the harshest of the new rules, because it targets the operation rather than the amount: a seller who used to keep several offers running in parallel across different payment methods has to settle on one and wait for it to be completed.

That combination also explains why you as a buyer may currently find less than you are used to. The supply side is the side where the brake has been applied.

Why a Swiss supervisory body is re-examining the 2022 compliance framework

According to the available reports, a compliance framework approved in 2022 is under review. That is the remarkable part of the affair: it is not a new offering that is being examined, but the assessment of a construction that has been running for years. Which body is conducting the review does not emerge unambiguously from the publicly available reports. Alongside the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, the Swiss supervisory architecture also includes recognised self-regulatory organisations to which financial intermediaries can be affiliated for anti-money-laundering oversight. We therefore name no authority as the reviewing body while that is not documented.

Nor is there, in substance, an allegation in the room that we could pass on here. What is publicly known is that a review is under way and that the provider has responded to it with temporary restrictions. Anything beyond that would be speculation, and speculation does not help you with the question of what to do with your holdings.

What the loss of the co-signature means for your trading in practice

The practical consequence concerns the dispute, not the normal case. If a trade runs as intended, you pay, the seller confirms, the balance is released. Nothing changes there.

It looks different when one side does not respond. Until now the marketplace could bring about the decision with its key. That lever is currently missing. Dispute resolution in the app does continue, but a decision that nobody can technically execute remains a recommendation. Anyone trading in this situation should know that before accepting an order, not afterwards.

From this follows a plain rule of conduct for the coming weeks: smaller amounts, trading partners with a visible history, and no trades whose failure would really hurt you. This is not restraint out of distrust of the provider, but the sober answer to the fact that a safety mechanism is temporarily unavailable.

Disputes without a trustee: how arbitration in the app carries on

The provider has expressly maintained the dispute route. You can therefore still report a dispute, and the marketplace will look at the case. What has changed is the enforceability of the outcome.

For you that means evidence becomes more important. Keep the proof of payment, the bank statement with the reference, and the chat communication, promptly and outside the app. Anyone who only starts gathering evidence once a dispute has begun is in the weaker position. That is true in any procedure, but it is especially true where the arbitrator cannot enforce the outcome themselves.

Are you affected? How to check your open offers and running trades

The check takes a few minutes and is worth it for anyone with the app on their device.

First open the overview of your trades and see whether any transaction is still open that has not yet been released. Such a transaction is the only case in which you really have to act promptly: settle it with your trading partner before you start anything new.

Second, go through your own sell offers. If you sell without identity verification you can only run one order at a time, so several parallel offers are no longer possible. Third, check whether your usual purchase amount is above the 500 franc limit. If it is higher, plan for splitting it and count the fee on each part.

And finally check where your Bitcoin ends up after the purchase. That is the point most people skip, and it is the one that counts in the long run.

Peach is a Swiss provider: why MiCA and BaFin do not apply here

For German users this classification matters more than any detail of the new limits. Switzerland belongs neither to the European Union nor to the European Economic Area. The EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets, MiCA for short, does not apply there, and the German financial supervisor has no jurisdiction over a Swiss provider.

So if you are considering where to move while the position at this marketplace is unresolved, the question of licensing is the first one to ask. A venue licensed as a crypto-asset service provider in the EU is subject to requirements on own funds, segregation of client money and complaints procedures that a marketplace without such a licence does not have to meet. Which providers this covers in the German-speaking market we have set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

None of this is meant as a recommendation against peer-to-peer trading. The point is that with a provider outside the EU legal area you have different remedies than inside it, and that this difference becomes visible precisely when something goes wrong.

Self-custody becomes a precondition under this model

A non-custodial marketplace does not run an account for you. There is no balance sitting there that could be left behind, and therefore nothing you would have to collect if operations were discontinued. That is the good news in this story, and it sets the case apart from the exchange wind-downs of recent months.

The flip side is that responsibility rests entirely with you. The Bitcoin you buy goes to an address whose key you hold. Lose access and nobody can help you. Which software solutions come into question and how they differ is set out in the comparison of software wallets; anyone holding larger amounts should also look into storage on a dedicated device.

What we could not verify, and why we say so anyway

Disclosure includes what did not work. On September 1, 2026 we tried to retrieve the details directly at source: the provider's home page, the terms and conditions, the section of frequently asked questions about trading, and the blog post itself. All requests were refused with status code 403, including with an ordinary browser identifier. The same applies to the interface the app works through.

For you as a reader that means nothing: in a browser these pages are reachable normally. For us it means we had to take the limits, the fee and the conditions for sellers from the reporting, without being able to check them against the wording of the terms. For the same reason we were also unable to count how many offers are actually on the market at present and at what premiums. That figure in particular would have been the best measure of how strongly the narrowing of the supply side is working.

Nor can we document which body is conducting the review, how long it will take, or how it will end. Where a figure or a name appears in this text, a named source stands behind it. Where both are missing, they are missing because we could not document them.

If you move to another trading venue: three points before the first order

Anyone changing venue swaps one risk for another and should do so deliberately. Three points make the difference.

First, the licence. Check whether the provider holds an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider in an EU member state, and in which one. The authorisation is granted in the home country and then applies across Europe; it appears in the provider's legal and imprint details.

Second, custody. A licensed exchange will as a rule run an account for you, which means your balance initially sits there. That is more convenient than trading from address to address, but it shifts the default risk onto the provider. Anyone taking that route should withdraw the holding after the purchase rather than leaving it in place.

Third, the costs. Compare the sum of fee, spread and withdrawal costs for the amount you actually move, instead of looking at the trading fee alone. With small amounts the fixed costs dominate, with large ones the percentage costs.

What this affair says about peer-to-peer trading in Europe

The case does not stand alone. Since the MiCA transition period ended in the middle of 2026, operating crypto services in the EU has been tied to an authorisation, and several providers have rebuilt or discontinued their offering for European customers as a result. Switzerland is not covered by that regulation, but its anti-money-laundering law sets its own requirements for financial intermediaries.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces sit between those two stools. Their promise is to broker trading between two private individuals without becoming a party themselves. The further an intermediary moves into the settlement, the sooner the rules for financial intermediaries take hold. The escrow key was exactly such a step into settlement, and the fact that it is now dormant while a review runs fits that observation.

For you as an investor the lesson is useful regardless of the outcome: a service whose business model hangs on a supervisory classification can change at short notice. That is no reason to avoid it. It is a reason not to build routines on it that could not survive its loss.

Frequently asked questions about the suspension of the escrow mode

Is my Bitcoin at Peach in danger?

With a non-custodial marketplace no balance sits with the provider between trades. What is affected are running transactions where the release is still pending. Those are exactly the ones to look at first.

Do I have to go through identity verification now?

As a buyer, according to the available reports, no. As a seller you need either a completed identity verification, admission to the allow list, or a vetted trading history; without those conditions you are left with a single active order.

Do the 500 francs also apply to German users paying in euros?

The limit is stated in Swiss francs because that is where the provider is based. It works as a value limit, regardless of the currency you pay in. Use the daily rate when planning your purchase amount.

How long will the present state last?

That is not publicly known. The provider describes the measures as temporary for the duration of the procedure and has named no end date.

Peach escrow suspended: what to take away

1. Look at your open transactions today. A trade whose release is pending is the only case with real time pressure. Settle it before you accept a new order, and secure the proof of payment and the chat history outside the app. Where your Bitcoin should sit afterwards is best settled beforehand: the comparison of software wallets shows how the common solutions differ.
2. Adjust your trade size to the new limits. 500 francs per order and a maximum six percent premium mean more individual transactions and therefore more fees. Anyone regularly buying larger amounts and holding them long term is better served by storage on a dedicated device; the differences are set out in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Have a second route ready before you need it. While the outcome of the procedure is open, it makes sense to know more than one trading venue. Look at the licence first and the fee second; which providers are licensed in the EU is set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Further reading: the provider's announcement of August 31, 2026 under the title Peach at a Crossroads, and the summary of the new limits and seller conditions at DiarioBitcoin.

(As of September 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)