Received Email from Localbitcoins

[UmerIdrees]

Today I received an email from local Bitcoins (no-reply@localbitcoins.com) and they are reminding me to withdraw the funds and some terms being applied to the account from 16 April.

I have no funds left there but still, I got this email. Do everyone who had an account in Localbitcoin got this mail today? 

They have closed the service since 16-Feb-2023, why do people still have funds there?


Email is here:-

Withdraw your bitcoins from localbitcoins.com
Dear Valued Customer,

Since LocalBitcoins services have been announced to close starting from 16th of February 2023, we kindly remind you to withdraw your bitcoins from the service. You can complete the process by logging into Localbitcoins.com, and executing a withdrawal request. You may be required to fill the necessary know your customer -information before you can proceed with the withdrawal.

We have also made certain changes to our Terms of Service, which will be applied to your account starting from 16th of April 2023.

    Wallet fees: For users who haven’t withdrawn their bitcoins from the service, we will start charging monthly administrative fees. The fee is not charged from users whose withdrawal request is pending.
    Incoming transactions: LocalBitcoins does not process any incoming bitcoin transactions anymore. In case bitcoins are sent to an address which has been linked to your account, it will not be credited to your account balance.
    Outgoing transactions: Outgoing transactions can have up to 14 day delay before they are broadcasted to the network.

In order to avoid these changes to affect your account, please proceed with the withdrawal request before 16th of April 2023.

Please refer to our Terms of Service for further details.

If you are having difficulties with the process, please don’t hesitate to contact our customer support.
Yours Sincerely,
LocalBitcoins

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[Nwada001]

Today I received an email from local Bitcoins (no-reply@localbitcoins.com) and they are reminding me to withdraw the funds and some terms being applied to the account from 16 April.

I guess it should be people who have forgotten their assets on the platform for a long time ago or have even lost access to the platform, which might have made them lose interest in the funds on such accounts, so it's possible that when the administrators realize that there are still some customers funds on their dashboard, they just have to forward mail over to all their customers instead of going through the stress of picking out those that are affected one after the other.

According to the date on the content of the mail, the mail is supposed to have arrived in individual mail boxes before today. Because I received such mail today and the deadline for withdrawal is already two months away,  the mail could be considered obsolete. Or maybe the mail was sent to you a few months ago and you just happened to see it recently in your mailbox.

[Doan9269]

Today I received an email from local Bitcoins (no-reply@localbitcoins.com) and they are reminding me to withdraw the funds and some terms being applied to the account from 16 April.

I have no funds left there but still, I got this email. Do everyone who had an account in Localbitcoin got this mail today? 

They have closed the service since 16-Feb-2023, why do people still have funds there?

You need to be very careful in this kind of experience because it may be a tricky way of trying to scam you and many other people that might use the same exchange, they may later request more informations from you try to tracked you through such means, but since you've said that you have no money left with them you don't have to worry about them, disregard the message but for those still having their and bitcoin hooked down there, there's more need to be more vigilant not to give out sensitive information, maybe we could see more user with same experience.

[seoincorporation]

They have closed the service since 16-Feb-2023, why do people still have funds there?

I think a lot of users have lost their bitcoins in that platform, I have a personal friend who lose his phone with the 2FA and never could recover 2 btc from that site. We must have in mind how that site started when bitcoin price was really low, we are talking about $300 each BTC, and people used to move big amounts of bitcoin in those times, so, lost coins should be a big amount.

By the way, I was taking a look to their block, and they say it was a business that generates $26M/year. i don't see a good reason to close it.

[Lorence.xD]

It's still a good thing to do for the system give notice to it's users incase they might forgotten and left some funds. Since some people are hodling some assets in a long term due to being inactive they might not be aware from shutting down of the localbitcoin. For sure those email were sent to you for a long time already because it would be inconvenient to give a rush notice to the users. Still would be better to double check your account and get all the balance that's left.

[Cricktor]

By the way, I was taking a look to their block, and they say it was a business that generates $26M/year. i don't see a good reason to close it.

I assume they gave up for some reasons. In their own statement it's actually a very vague statement. Despite decline in trading volume and more, it could also be some regulatory pressure, like trying to force them to perform some kind of KYC or EU AML rules overhead. Midth of 2019 they had to stop offering in-person cash trading which might have been popular for some shady guys. (I'm not saying that in-cash trading is shady per se, but it is certainly interesting for criminals to launder cash.)

Dear Valued Customers,

Originally LocalBitcoins was established to Bring Bitcoin Everywhere and drive global financial inclusion. We have honored that mission for over 10 years and we are proud of what we have achieved together with all of you, our loyal community.

We are therefore sad to share, that regardless of our efforts to overcome challenges during the ongoing very cold crypto-winter, we have regretfully concluded that LocalBitcoins can no longer provide its Bitcoin trading service.

We encourage all customers to withdraw their funds from LocalBitcoins and we ask you to proceed with withdrawing the Bitcoins from your LocalBitcoins wallet. You have 12 months to withdraw, however of course we encourage you to proceed withdrawing sooner.

Thank you for being a part of the LocalBitcoins family! It has been our honor and pleasure to serve you over the last decade.
Timeline for discontinuing the Bitcoin trading service:

•     2023-02-09 Suspension of new sign ups
•     2023-02-16
•         Suspension of trading on LocalBitcoins
•         Suspension of using LocalBitcoins wallet (with exception of withdrawing one's funds)
•     After 2023-02-17 LocalBitcoins customers will only be able to log-in to withdraw their Bitcoins. The trading and Wallet services will no longer be available at this point.

We thank you for choosing LocalBitcoins for all these years and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

[Ojima-ojo]

You need to be very careful in this kind of experience because it may be a tricky way of trying to scam you and many other people that might use the same exchange, they may later request more informations from you try to tracked you through such means, but since you've said that you have no money left with them you don't have to worry about them, disregard the message but for those still having their and bitcoin hooked down there, there's more need to be more vigilant not to give out sensitive information, maybe we could see more user with same experience.

Not really a risk and the email is from local bitcoin and this is a standard procedure to make sure no one has funds left on the exchange before the final closure of their service and nothing more, and for the ops to have received the email means he has an account on LocalBitcoins and since the email is directed to all the registered customers the email will get delivered to them whether theirs have zero balance or some funds left in the wallets.


Also, I don't think there is a need to fill in any sensitive information to withdraw if you have a balance other than just your wallet's public address.

[panganib999]

Today I received an email from local Bitcoins (no-reply@localbitcoins.com) and they are reminding me to withdraw the funds and some terms being applied to the account from 16 April.

I have no funds left there but still, I got this email. Do everyone who had an account in Localbitcoin got this mail today? 

They have closed the service since 16-Feb-2023, why do people still have funds there?


Email is here:-

Withdraw your bitcoins from localbitcoins.com
Dear Valued Customer,

Since LocalBitcoins services have been announced to close starting from 16th of February 2023, we kindly remind you to withdraw your bitcoins from the service. You can complete the process by logging into Localbitcoins.com, and executing a withdrawal request. You may be required to fill the necessary know your customer -information before you can proceed with the withdrawal.

We have also made certain changes to our Terms of Service, which will be applied to your account starting from 16th of April 2023.

    Wallet fees: For users who haven’t withdrawn their bitcoins from the service, we will start charging monthly administrative fees. The fee is not charged from users whose withdrawal request is pending.
    Incoming transactions: LocalBitcoins does not process any incoming bitcoin transactions anymore. In case bitcoins are sent to an address which has been linked to your account, it will not be credited to your account balance.
    Outgoing transactions: Outgoing transactions can have up to 14 day delay before they are broadcasted to the network.

In order to avoid these changes to affect your account, please proceed with the withdrawal request before 16th of April 2023.

Please refer to our Terms of Service for further details.

If you are having difficulties with the process, please don’t hesitate to contact our customer support.
Yours Sincerely,
LocalBitcoins

Welp, I'm guessing it's the classic "I forgot" reason that lead them to still retain funds on localbitcoins even though the site's no longer up. In any case, I have three things in mind that's connected to this email you received OP.

 From the looks of it this is an old email considering the due date for withdrawal's from two months back and it's a bummer you only saw this email a little late. For sure you're getting charged for it too. I suggest you take your funds out right there and then, transfer it to a self-custodial wallet, and secure it. You might even want to run it through a mixer if you're iffy about the security of the assets that are supposedly still in their custody just to make sure but if I were you, I'd take it and do everything I think is appropriate to retain most of my funds.

But since you don't have any funds at all, I'm guessing this is an automated service email that Localbitcoin's put in place to inform people who still had funds on their wallet. They may have just made a mistake with the logistics but I think it's cool that at the very least they're letting people know instead of keeping the funds to themselves like any normal people would do.

Or it could also be a scam lead by other people hoping to steal your information so they can beat you to your funds and steal it from you, basically a phishing scheme in replacement of the real localbitcoins email that was sent to people who really had funds kept in their account. Scammers sent it to all emails connected to localbitcoins in hopes of landing one belligerent newbie who'd fill in their credentials.

[famososMuertos]

What is the point of your question, there are people who leave everything to the last minute, on the other hand, from a legal point of view there may be users, as some mentioned in a few posts back, due to requested credentials or 2Fa, they have not been able to make withdraws, this was a platform that began to have rigidity with the KYC.

In fact, I know people who have even received text messages (yes, if those things are still used), , for better or for worse this platform has shown that an exchange can say goodbye without drama, at least they are paying.

[LTU_btc]

I have no idea when was the final date to withdraw funds from Localbitcoins, maybe it's still possible? I think that such messages is normal thing. Not everyone follows news and they have no idea that Localbitcoins closed. And always when such platfroms closes, many users wake up after few month and even years that they don't have access to money that they had on platform. I think number of users who still have money on Localbitcoins is huge.

[CryptSafe]

This is so kind and generous of them. After a long time of closing and inactivity, they deemed it fit contacting their clients to still attempt to withdrawing back their funds which I still rare. There are others that absconded with their clients funds and could not be traced till this very moment and how about those that misappropriated finds kept under their custody too.

This little kindness should be appluaded and not criticised. OP did well to bringing it here for the forum to see. OP you did fine.
I think users of the exchange who have funds still pending withdrawal should do that immediately since they have a prior notice for withdrawal.

[Z-tight]

This is so kind and generous of them. After a long time of closing and inactivity, they deemed it fit contacting their clients to still attempt to withdrawing back their funds which I still rare. There are others that absconded with their clients funds and could not be traced till this very moment and how about those that misappropriated finds kept under their custody too.

Their customers have 12 months to withdraw their funds, the exchange closed down in February this year, so customers still have time to withdraw their funds. This message is just to remind them to withdraw their funds and also to tell them about the changes to their terms of service, which took effect from the 16th of April, so i am surprised that this message is coming now, it should have come earlier, or maybe op just saw theirs.

By the way, I was taking a look to their block, and they say it was a business that generates $26M/year. i don't see a good reason to close it.

Localbitcoins said it is because of "crypto-winter", but i don't think it is correct. They were slowly losing their trading volume when they switched from a p2p exchange to a kyc exchange, their customers used to be people who wanted to trade p2p, so since the exchange stopped being a p2p exchange, they had to trade in other p2p exchanges, and that's why Localbitcoins lost most of their trading volume and eventually closed down.

[so98nn]

They closed because their accounts were hard to manage considering they were the closest thing to the peer to peer channel. You used to transfer directly from unknown persons bank account to your account and thus there was no literal trace of your bitcoin holding or whether that money was given for the bitcoin exchange and much more. Localbitcoin challenge started when all the counties started imploring them with the strict regulations of the KYC. This was not possible on the Localbitcoin due to its peer to peer model. It’s really sad to see this platform go off just like that. Anyways they have seen the best days of their business.

[coupable]

It's still a good thing to do for the system give notice to it's users incase they might forgotten and left some funds. Since some people are hodling some assets in a long term due to being inactive they might not be aware from shutting down of the localbitcoin. For sure those email were sent to you for a long time already because it would be inconvenient to give a rush notice to the users. Still would be better to double check your account and get all the balance that's left.

I agree with you that it is a good step, but the question is interesting about that they do not have to do that and they can benefit from these assets. What's strange about the message the OP received is that he doesn't have any assets on the platform and also that the date on the message is old ; "In order to avoid these changes to affect your account, please proceed with the withdrawal request before 16th of April 2023."
As far as I understand, not all users have received this message, including myself. I think it may be a technical error, and the best thing to do, in my opinion, is to contact the support team if it is still working and inquire.
Caution is required with regard to personal data, especially if you are sure that you do not have assets on the platform before it was closed.

[Woodie]

Today I received an email from local Bitcoins (no-reply@localbitcoins.com) and they are reminding me to withdraw the funds and some terms being applied to the account from 16 April.

Is it worth checking just incase you forgot that you had sent some coins to your local Bitcoins account or somebody airdropped some coins to your wallet...

Btw all things considered,  these reminders are part of the winding up process, and this is just procedure for them.

I have no funds left there but still, I got this email. Do everyone who had an account in Localbitcoin got this mail today?  

They have closed the service since 16-Feb-2023, why do people still have funds there?

Email is here:-

Snip

They might have shutdown months ago ,but my guess is that this is a generic email that is being sent to everyone so that should that grace period to withdraw come to an end, they are free to keep whatever bitcoins these accounts  hold.

Btw I think this is how most of the crypto  platforms close  down, if memory saves me right this should have been the same way directbet wound down.