This Thursday, the fact that the LocalBitcoins platform announced its immediate cessation of operations made news throughout the crypto ecosystem space. This announcement brought with it various opinions from leaders in the ecosystem. Anibal Garrido, Venezuelan advisor on crypto assets, With many years of experience in the industry, he shared his impressions on the matter with Cointelegraph en Español. .
First, during the interview, Garrido maintained that the closure of LocalBitcoins can have multiple interpretations from the reasons why they generated it, but in his opinion the platform did not know how to reinvent itself.nor sustainably maintain marketing strategies that prevent the migration of its users to other platforms with greater characteristics.
“Staying static in such a changing and dynamic market, especially with regard to UI/UX, the user experience and the interface that migrated and changed little, is an important consideration that, together with having few clients and the situation that we have in the market where the numbers do not give, force us to make these difficult decisions. As it happened with the case of Localcryptos, formerly LocalEthereum”Garrido pointed out.
LocalBitcoins and its lack of innovation
On the other hand, contrasted the current times with the beginnings of LocalBitcoins, and mentioned that unlike then, now in the present they did not know how to take advantage of the context to show off your site in the now much larger market.
“LocalBitcoins was a benchmark because before there were no offers in the entire Latam market and part of the global market for easy exchange of fiat currency to bitcoin through a P2P system”said.
“Local knew how to take advantage of that in the first exchange, it was the most promising, with the highest volume, merchants that allowed users to have different options where to carry out their p2p operations. However, now the fact of not creating a strategy to allow itself to sustain itself in the market, open up to other markets such as stablecoins, and additionally the issue of UI/UX made us arrive at today’s stage”Garrido explained.
Effects on the ecosystem?
According to Garrido, the closure of LocalBitcoins will not have a severe impact on the crypto marketbecause its trade volume has been affected in recent times since the arrival of new players that have received a large migration of users:
“The reason is very simple, if you review the Coindace numbers, Localbitcoin at the time in the case of Venezuela used to handle several thousand Bitcoins per month, currently the last numbers I saw did not reach 30 or 40 units per month, I think there were a radical decrease, that money will obviously migrate to other platforms, but I don’t think there will be a very big affectation in Venezuela and Latam”he pointed.
Source: Coin Dance
What LocalBitcoins represented for Venezuela and Latin America
Finally, Garrido, who also revealed via Twitter that it started its operations in Bitcoin through the platformto the fact that today it closes its doors, in this sense he mentioned the following:
“For those of us who have been in this for a long time, the case of LocalBitcoins at the regional level and the case of SurBTC in Venezuela, especially, were those means, those platforms or bridges that Venezuelans used, and Latin American users to be able to use bitcoin and have a gateway to Bitcoin. The importance was extremely remarkable, the trading volume of Local before Binance’s penetration in the South American market was the leader, and I think it was a milestone.”
Likewise, he pointed out that from his personal perspective, it was a pity that a player like the case of Localbitcoins unfortunately had to close its doors.
I confess without any embarrassment that I started in #Bitcoin in 1 custodial platform called @localbitcoins
Today after 10 years of operation, it closes its doors
I regret your departure, but I celebrate your contribution to the community
Thank you Local! Giving you our keys was a pleasant experience
— Ani₿al Garrido (@anibalcripto) February 9, 2023
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