RIP LocalMonero
Table of Contents
The Announcement
As you may have heard, LocalMonero announced recently (May 7th, 2024) that they decided to shutdown.
This announcement was abrupt, with all new sign-ups and ad postings being disabled with the release of the announcement.
Trades will be disabled May 14th 2024, 1 week after the announcement.
The reasons for closure was “due to a combination of internal and external factors”.
The maintainers of the site seem to be hopeful that DEXs and atomic swaps will allow for continues private purchase methods for Monero.
My theories
I do not doubt that the “external factors” were caused by regulatory pressure.
It is no secret that the current U.S. congress and the Biden administration is hostile to this sort of thing.
President Biden himself recently said he wanted to ban decentralized finance. Based on what I have heard, the alphabet boys will act how the president wants them to in regards to certain issues, so it makes sense that Monero and exchanges are under attack.
My thoughts
I find this to be very sad news.
I also am distressed by the state of politics here in the U.S. Both parties do not have the interests of the populace as a main focus and/or are not approaching things correctly. People have to choose between a wannabe dictator (who will destroy our alliances, international influence/policy, and make things suck in general) or some other guy that will at best keep the ship afloat (while trying to ban Monero/Cryptocurrency and potentially hurting the economy).
If the political landscape is similar to this in around 15 years, expect some new contenders 😉
Even if someone crypto and privacy friendly is in power (there is already a decent pro-crypto voting block in the senate) it is still difficult to support Monero as people need to be taxed unless some radical changes take place. You don’t know if someone used their money to buy a yacht or help impoverished people and can’t tax accordingly.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in some technocrat anarchist utopia where there are no taxes and therefore no public services and everything is just a crumbling pile of bones.
I mean some could say that is our current state of affairs…