As we mentioned a few days ago Localbitcoins deleted all cash local trades without warning or explanation.
This morning Localbitcoins ended their silence about the deletion of local cash bitcoin trading ads. We want to point out that Localbitcoins did not respond to any attempts to contact them. It took Localbitcoins 3 days to issue a statement on this. They gave users no warning and did not allow traders any chance to copy their ads or save any information that may have been in them.
Their apologies come across as severely insincere.
Note on the removal of Local Cash Ads
LocalBitcoins’ mission is to enable access to Bitcoin everywhere in the world. Many people around the globe do not have other payment options than cash and we understand the importance of cash trades as a tool in promoting equal access to Bitcoin trading.
However, LocalBitcoins, as a Virtual Currency Provider located in Finland, is liable to the obligations determined by the Act on Detecting and Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. This condition demands us to follow certain sanctions and implement effective controls to mitigate related threats.
In order to adapt to the current regulatory environment, we had to reconsider our policy on local cash trades as well as on the geographical areas where our service is available, among other platform features. As a consequence, advertisements in the cash category (i.e. local cash trades) were disabled in our platform on Saturday 1st of June.
We offer our sincere apologies to the users who were negatively affected by these measures.
LocaIBitcoins.com