The bear market that the crypto industry is going through is like a hurricane that takes everything in its path. Even the most robust and sometimes the oldest can no longer resist it. The localBitcoins peer-to-peer crypto exchange platform is one of them.
LocalBitcoins will have been standing for ten years
It is undoubtedly one of most important information from this week. LocalBitcoins, one of the oldest companies in the crypto industry, has announced the end of its operations. The termination comes after almost ten years of operations in the crypto industry. A decade in which the exchange based in Helsinki, Finland has worked to make various services available to its users.
Among other things, these services allow users to carry out operations of the Finnish currency in exchange for bitcoins (BTC). The company will no longer be able to offer them due to the bear market prevailing in the crypto industry. Circumstances that significantly affected its operational and financial performance.
Faced with this situation, going out of business remains the ultimate option after having tried everything to stay afloat and maintain itself. The company therefore called on its users to withdraw their assets from the platform.
“However, of course, we encourage you to withdraw sooner”, she said in a statement. This specifies that LocalBitcoins users have 12 months to do so. Until then, the company will no longer receive listings on the exchange and is already working to cancel new listings.
It is thus a page in the history of the crypto and bitcoin ecosystem that is definitively closed.
The consequence of bad strategic choices?
In 2021, LocalBitcoins had taken an important operational step by diversifying its service offer. In addition to its classic service of buying and selling BTC in cash, the platform had opted for altcoins. Among these were Dogecoin (DOGE), Polkadot (DOT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), etc.
Most recently, in January 2023, the company announced a new feature that allows users to buy BTC with one click. This means that it has so far met with great success. We can nevertheless consider that in addition to the bear market, operational choices by LocalBitcoins contributed to its fall.
A study, published in 2019, revealed that a good part of the transactions carried out on the platform were used to launder money. Following his revelations, the leaders obviously multiplied the measures to strengthen their control protocol.
It probably didn’t have any real impact. The overall crypto trading volume on LocalBitcoins has continued to plummet since its last peak in December 2017. With the bear market which is raging, a trivial but supposed question deserves to be asked: whose turn it is?
Receive a digest of news in the world of cryptocurrencies by subscribing to our new service of daily and weekly so you don’t miss any of the essential Tremplin.io!
