- LocalBitcoins announced its closure after 11 years of operation.
- Customers have 12 months to withdraw their bitcoins from the exchange from today.
- LocalBitcoins is a P2P bitcoin trading platform registered in Finland.
OG bitcoin (BTC) trading platform LocalBitcoins has announced its closure after around 11 years of operation.
The announcement was made public today, February 9 on LocalBitcoins’ official website. As of today, LocalBitcoins will not be accepting new user signups.
Existing users will only have 1 week remaining to use the platform to trade bitcoins. On February 16, trading will discontinue as well as deposits. Users will then be able to use the platform to withdraw their assets.
LocalBitcoins is also giving users 12 months to withdraw their bitcoins. Otherwise, they will not be able to access their LocalBitcoins wallet anymore once the platform has shut down for good.
According to the announcement, the platform has been struggling to maintain its operations after suffering from a harsh crypto winter since last year.
The announcement read:
“We are therefore sad to share, that regardless of our efforts to overcome challenges during the ongoing very cold crypto-winter, we have regretfully concluded that LocalBitcoins can no longer provide its Bitcoin trading service.”
LocalBitcoins is an early bitcoin trading service that allowed customers to exchange bitcoins in a genuinely peer-to-peer manner. However, the ascent of centralized exchanges (CEXs) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) might have forced the P2P bitcoin exchange into closure.
The exchange, founded in 2012, is registered in Finland and is led by CEO Sara Leppänen.
