LocalBitcoins

LocalBitcoins
LocalBitcoins

Bitcoin exchange LocalBitcoins.com is struggling to regain functionality as problems with network hardware have crippled its website since Saturday night.

The LocalBitcoins team assured users that the issue was not security-related, posting a statement on the site saying that all trades and bitcoins were safe.

Problems with the server hardware began on the night of May 17, Central European Time, the statement said, estimating the time to repair the site at about ten hours.

By Monday afternoon, however, the site was still non-functional. LocalBitcoins staff, posting periodic updates on Twitter, said repairs would take at least another 24 hours.

The LocalBitcoins.com site moved to a new server at the end of April following a hacker attack, though it was not immediately clear if the new server hardware problems were related to the switch.

User reactions to the outage, meanwhile, ranged from good-natured understanding to pointed anger and disappointment at the ongoing inconvenience.

Many clients, responding to the exchange’s updates on Twitter, thanked the service for providing ongoing information about the problem.

Others were less amiable. “I’m hoping there’s compensation for lost revenue and stress,” one user tweeted back.

LocalBitcoins.com is a Finnish Bitcoin startup, launched in June 2012, that helps organize person-to-person trading of local fiat currency for bitcoins. The site had about 110,000 active users as of last December, trading 1400-3000 bitcoins daily, according to ArcticStartup. The project also announced in February that it would begin producing low-cost Bitcoin ATMs.

LocalBitcoins has also been used for criminal activity, however. Two Florida men were arrested earlier this year for laundering money through the LocalBitcoins website.