Most Bitcoin veterans know LocalBitcoins. A pioneer in peer-to-peer trading Bitcoin and one of the oldest services available to the Bitcoin community worldwide. Today, the company behind the platform had sad news for their customers: LocalBitcoins is closing its doors for good.

What is LocalBitcoins and why is the platform shutting down all operations?

LocalBitcoins was one of a kind

Most services that involve trading are offering the functionality of a broker or an exchange. Meaning that each buy or sell order is either executed against an order book or is filled by the broker entirely.

LocalBitcoins was very different from that model by offering an open and free marketplace to Bitcoin peer-to-peer. This was very exciting especially when the platform started in 2013. Back then, arbitrage was a real option because buyers and sellers negotiated prices with each other. This created massive opportunities.

But LocalBitcoins was not only a place where one could make a good bargain but also a place that brought Bitcoiners from the whole world together.

Only withdrawals are allowed

Starting yesterday, new signups were disabled. Next week on February 16^th, the LocalBitcoins wallet and trading will be suspended. From that moment on, account holders can only withdraw their coins from the platform.

After that day, the platform will allow the withdrawal of funds for one year. Customers are well advised to act accordingly and secure their precious BTC. 

The platform seizes its operation after US authorities claimed that it had connections to Bitzlato. According to LocalBitcoins, Russian customers were expelled from trading in October last year and no direct connections were ever made or initiated between the two platforms. LocalBitcoins was regulated by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority and all customers had to identify themselves before being able to trade on the platform.

Are you looking for a new home?

In case you’ve traded on LocalBitcoins so far, it might be a good idea to settle elsewhere. LiteBit offers a lot of functionalities that you are used to such as the LiteBit wallet that supports not only Bitcoin but also dozens of other crypto assets.

While we don’t enable peer-to-peer trading, Bitcoin can be bought and sold on Litebit securely and easily. Unlike with peer-to-peer trading, you save yourself some unnecessary extra steps and you can use several payment methods to buy crypto or withdraw cash to your bank account.