Thunderbolt in the Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer community. AgoraDesk, one of the major players in the sector and also publisher of the LocalMonero site, has just announced that it is closing its doors.
Times are tough for privacy advocates. After the episodes Tornado Cash, Samurai
and Wasabi, now AgoraDesk has announced its closure:
After almost 7 years in business, due to a combination of internal and external factors, we have made the difficult decision to close our platform.
AgoraDesk is a platform recognized for allowing the purchase and sale of bitcoins without KYC, on a peer-to-peer basis. This is thanks to a connection between buyers and sellers and an escrow process to secure exchanges. AgoraDesk also manages the site LocalMoneroits alter ego dedicated to the cryptocurrency Monero, with a more sulphurous reputation due to its completely anonymous transactions and which is also affected by the closure announcement.
The press release does not detail the exact reasons for this decision. Nor if it is related to the authorities' previous offensives on bitcoin anonymization solutions. It's hard not to see a link there. Regardless, speculation will run rampant.
This episode, however, highlights the fact that any solution, if it is centralized in one way or another, is ultimately vulnerable, despite all the care taken. The future will tell whether or not other competing platforms (HodlHodl, LocalCoinSwap, Peach, etc.) will suffer the same fate. In this context, choosing a 100% decentralized solution, such as BISQ, may prove to be an alternative.
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