How to Buy and Sell Large Amounts of Bitcoin

If you're buying less than about $50,000 of bitcoin, you don't need anything special. A regulated exchange and a limit order will do the job.

Above that, the fee on the screen stops being what costs you money.

What costs you is the price moving while your order fills, the daily limits on your exchange and your bank, and the gap between sending your money and getting your coins.

An OTC desk exists to fix that, with one firm price for the whole amount, settlement by bank wire or stablecoins, and the coins delivered straight into custody if you want.

How much of that applies to you comes down to the size of the trade.

That $50,000 line isn't something we made up to sell our own desk. Kraken's OTC desk starts there too, Binance's manual block trading starts at $200,000, and our OTC desk at RYKI starts at $50,000 as well.

Why a big market order costs more than it looks

A market order buys whatever is for sale right now, starting with the cheapest coins on the order book and working up, so every fill on a big order costs a bit more than the last.

That's slippage, and it adds up fast. With 2 bitcoin offered at $100,000, then 8 at $100,100, 20 at $100,300 and 40 at $100,600, a market order for 50 bitcoin averages $100,376, which is about $18,800 more than the screen suggested, with no fee showing anywhere.

Real order books are much deeper than that, but the depth is concentrated.

A January 2026 snapshot on Kaiko's site counted about $631 million of bitcoin within 1% of the price across major venues, 86% of it on Binance, Bybit and OKX, and in the 10 October 2025 crash, Kaiko analyst Thomas Probst found that depth fell by about 60% within hours.

Three ways to buy size

The first is to work the order yourself on an exchange, splitting it over time with an algorithm like the TWAP order Coinbase Prime describes as "designed to execute large orders over time to minimize market impact".

It works, but you carry the risk while the order fills, and the exchange's deposit and withdrawal limits still apply at both ends.

The second is to ask an OTC desk for a quote, which hands that risk to someone else. You get one price for the whole amount, and once you accept, sourcing the coins and any market move along the way are the desk's problem. On Coinbase Prime, electronic quotes last a maximum of 2.5 seconds, while with a phone or chat desk you agree the window with your dealer, and our explainer on what an OTC desk is covers how desks are set up and paid.

The third is a prime broker, which bundles trading, custody and financing for funds that trade every day. Hedge funds mix all three to buy big without moving the market, but for a family office, a company or an individual making an occasional large trade, the desk is the simplest route.

How an OTC purchase works

At our desk, like most others, a purchase runs through six steps.

1. Tell the desk what you want, meaning the size, the asset, how you're paying and where the coins should go. At RYKI, a named dealer gets back to you within two business hours.

2. Get onboarded. Expect identity checks and questions about where the money comes from, which usually take a few business days.

3. Register your accounts. The bank account you pay from has to be in your own name, and you may need to prove you control your wallet by sending a tiny, exact amount from it.

4. Get a firm quote, one price for the full amount, good for a short window.

5. Accept, and the price is locked. Any market move from then on is the desk's problem.

6. Settle. Money and coins change hands on the terms agreed up front, and at RYKI the coins can go straight into our segregated cold storage instead of sitting on an exchange.

That locked price should be all-in, because most desks build their margin into it rather than charging a fee.

The bid or offer price we show is the 'all-inclusive' price, so the only fair comparison between desks is how much bitcoin you end up with for the same money.

Ask what the price leaves out, like network fees, your bank's wire charges and currency conversion, and don't expect size to buy you a discount. It buys certainty and privacy, and anyone offering bitcoin below market is a red flag.

Who sends first, and why it matters more than the price

Every large trade has a moment where one side has delivered and the other hasn't, and desks handle it in four ways.

• Pre-funding. You pay first and the desk delivers after, so you're exposed until it does.

• Delivery versus payment. Each side's transfer only completes if the other's does. In crypto the label sometimes has no real settlement system behind it, so ask how the desk does it.

• Post-trade credit. The desk trades first and you settle later.

• Settling from custody. The trade settles inside the regulated firm that already holds your assets.

For a first trade with a new desk, expect to pre-fund, which is why we'd put who the desk is ahead of a few basis points on the price.

Speed shrinks the exposure too. At our desk, bank settlement completes the same day where cut-offs allow, and stablecoin settlement usually clears in minutes.

The paperwork, and why a good desk asks more questions

Expect questions about two different things. Source of funds is where the money for this particular trade came from, like a property sale or a dividend, and source of wealth is how you came to have that kind of money at all, which we describe as where the customer's entire body of wealth and assets came from.

Having these ready can save you days.

• ID and proof of address, or for a company, trust or foundation, its documents and the people who own or control it.

• Bank statements showing the money for the trade and where it came from.

• Evidence of how you built your wealth, such as a business sale, an inheritance or earlier crypto gains.

• Exchange statements and wallet records for any crypto you already hold.

None of this is personal. The Financial Action Task Force's red flags include "Converting a large amount of fiat currency into VAs", which describes almost every large first trade, and in February 2026 the tax enforcement chiefs of five countries singled out OTC desks as a possible "obfuscation tool for tax evaders and money launderers."

A well-run desk asks more questions because of that, and one that asks none should worry you.

The same list of red flags covers how you split a trade. Breaking it into pieces for price or practical reasons is normal, but splitting it to stay under a reporting threshold is structuring, so don't do it, and walk away from anyone who suggests it.

Where to keep a large amount of bitcoin

Once the coins land, where they sit is its own risk decision, and leaving a large balance on an exchange is the option we'd steer anyone away from.

When Celsius froze withdrawals in June 2022, its customers had $4.7 billion they couldn't touch, and FTX customers were repaid in dollars at November 2022 prices, which left a bitcoin claim worth about 20% of an actual bitcoin by March 2025.

Holding the keys yourself swaps that risk for your own.

The SEC's custody bulletin puts it bluntly, "If you lose your private key, you permanently lose access to the crypto assets in your wallet."

Multisig helps, but someone still has to be able to step in if something happens to you.

A regulated custodian is built for large holdings, with segregated accounts, approval rules that stop any one person moving funds, and a regulator checking the setup. It isn't risk-free, so ask what happens if the custodian fails and read the insurance, because the FDIC "does not insure assets issued by non-bank entities, such as crypto companies", and SIPC doesn't cover crypto that isn't a security.

RYKI's custody keeps client assets 100% in cold storage by default, requires 3-of-5 multi-party approval for any movement, keeps every client's holdings segregated, and completes standard withdrawals in under four hours.

Our family office custody guide compares the options in more depth.

Selling a large amount and getting the money into your bank

Selling is the same journey in reverse, with one extra problem at the end, landing a large amount of money in a bank account that wasn't expecting it.

Exchange limits are the first wall. Kraken's standard accounts can withdraw up to $100,000 a day in cash, and Coinbase's professional exchange has a default Fedwire limit of $100,000 a day, so seven or eight figures can take weeks to get out that way.

Your bank is the second wall, so call before the money arrives and tell them what's coming, how much, from whom and why. Banks rarely cap incoming payments, and NatWest, for one, limits payments to exchanges while saying "there's no block or limits on payments being made to you," but a large receipt will still come with questions.

Selling through a desk gets around most of this.

You get a firm price for the whole amount, send the coins, and the desk wires the money to your registered bank account. At our desk that means same-day settlement where cut-offs allow, in USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, CHF, HKD, SGD or JPY, or stablecoins in minutes.

Then there's tax, because selling is usually a taxable event. In the US the IRS treats crypto as property and brokers now report sales on Form 1099-DA, and in the UK you may owe Capital Gains Tax when you sell.

Make sure you talk to a tax adviser before you sell, not after, and keep every trade confirmation.

How crypto millionaires actually cash out

Quietly, in planned pieces, and often without selling everything.

Most sell through a desk in tranches. Some sell only what they need and borrow against the rest, and Coinbase, for example, lets US customers outside New York borrow up to 5,000,000 USDC against bitcoin, with automatic liquidation if the loan-to-value ratio hits 86%.

At the very top, it's often estate planning.

When Galaxy sold more than 80,000 bitcoin in July 2025, worth over $9 billion at the time, it was for a "Satoshi-era investor" as part of their estate planning.

If your cash-out is part of a bigger plan around residency, tax or a family office, that's the work our tailored solutions team does.

Keeping a big trade quiet and safe

Discretion isn't anonymity.

A regulated desk knows exactly who you are, and the discreet part is that your size isn't broadcast to the market and your details aren't spread across a dozen platforms.

That matters more than it used to. CertiK counted 72 verified "wrench attacks" in 2025, physical attacks to force crypto transfers, up 75% on 2024, and in May 2025 bribed Coinbase support agents leaked customer data including names, addresses and balances.

Every platform holding your details is one more place they can leak from.

Scammers go after big transfers too. In May 2024 one holder sent about $68 million in wrapped bitcoin to a lookalike address planted in their transaction history, an attack called address poisoning, and the fixes are boring but they work.

• Use an address allowlist, so funds only go to saved addresses.

• Send a small test amount first and confirm it arrived.

• Check the whole address, not just the first and last few characters.

• Never act on new bank details or wallet addresses sent by email or chat, and call back on a number you already had.

Questions to ask any desk before you send anything

When FTX collapsed in 2022 and Genesis followed in 2023, their customers waited up to two years as creditors, and counterparty risk became the first thing anyone checks.

These are the questions we'd ask any desk, including ours.

If you'd like to put these to us, send an enquiry through our OTC desk and a named dealer will come back to you within two business hours.

Our Cayman crypto licensing guide also explains what CIMA expects of a licensed firm like ours.

And if your trade is under $50,000, you can skip all of this. Use a regulated exchange, set a limit order, and move the coins somewhere safe once they land.