Key takeaways:
- Monero, the platform for peer-to-peer privacy coin trading, has immediately shut down its services, joining the recent wave of closures and arrests.
- The company used the phrase “a combination of internal and external factors” to explain why it was closing, although it did not specify.
Monero, the platform for peer-to-peer privacy coin trading, has joined the recent wave of crypto privacy closures and arrests by shutting down its services with immediate effect.
On May 7, LocalMonero declared that all new registrations and publishing of advertisements for Monero trades are disabled immediately. The marketplace will stop trading the cryptocurrency asset with a privacy focus on May 14.
The company used the phrase “a combination of internal and external factors” to explain why it was closing, although it did not specify.
It further stated that the website will be shut down on November 7 and urged users to retrieve any money from their wallets before then, since failure to do so could result in them being deemed abandoned.
Launched in 2017 as the XMR counterpart of LocalBitcoins, the P2P Monero trading site acknowledged that the Monero ecosystem has grown significantly over time.
The team also expressed confidence in Monero’s future, “with or without our platform,” citing the impending launch of decentralized exchanges like Haveno and Serai as well as a recently revealed privacy improvement known as Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMPs).
In the wake of Tornado Cash’s recent lawsuit and Kraken’s April withdrawal of Monero service for its users in Belgium and Ireland, some have seen this move as another setback for privacy coins and protocols.
In a post on X on May 7, privacy advocate “sethforprivacy” remarked that it was a “terribly sad day.” Furthermore, he stated that there is currently no direct fiat to XMR substitute and that LocalMonero has been “a cornerstone of the no-KYC Monero ecosystem.”
Global financial regulators have been focusing on privacy coins and services in recent months. The co-founders of Samourai Wallet, a cryptocurrency mixer, were detained in April on suspicion of money laundering.
The founders of Wasabi CoinJoin and Trezor Coinjoin, two more private businesses, recently closed as the privacy crackdown got worse.
