In a blog post published on November 19, LocalEthereum announced that it had renamed itself to LocalCryptos to support more crypto assets. Its first new crypto assets is Bitcoin and has plans to added support for ERC-20, Dash, and Litecoin (LTC).
LocalCryptos, formerly LocalEthereum, said it had completed the pivotal step of adding support for Bitcoin as well as Ether (ETH). As a main competitor to P2P Bitcoin (BTC) exchange LocalBitcoins, the LocalCryptos said that new platform was one-stop shop for fiat-to-crypto ramps worldwide, beginning with BTC and ETH.
The company said:
“This is a large milestone for the platform and our community of more than 100,000 peer-to-peer traders. More than a name change, LocalCryptos is a leap toward making true peer-to-peer trading available to everyone.”
LocalCryptos said it aims to become the new leader in P2P fiat-to-crypto trading. Unlike its rival LocalBitcoins, it is non-custodial, end-to-end encrypted, and completely private. The form further pointed out that its non-custodial approach lowers the risk of theft and hacking.
The company further added that other platforms like LocalBitcoins which are centralized and custodial are vulnerable to online attacks as blog post reads:
“Platforms like LocalBitcoins are centralized, custodial, and a far cry from private. These platforms are vulnerable to hacks and thefts like a centralized exchange. Hackers have stolen several billion dollars from centralized crypto platforms. At least two of those heists took from LocalBitcoins traders.”
But non-custodial approach also comes at a cost as if a user loses its password, they can’t help to recover. But the firm said that it wants to put users under full control of their assets.
Despite all these new additions, LocalCryptos is going nowhere with Ethereum but instead, adding more to it. It said LocalEthereum was one of the most popular decentralized applications, and that’s not changing. It also shown its intentions to add more Ethereum-based tokens and develop new smart contracts to handle ERC20s, and, in the more distant future, ERC721s.
Australia-based LocalCryptos began its operation in 2017 as the first peer-to-peer marketplace for Ethereum. Now it serves more than 100,000 in over 100 countries with 1000 daily active users and about 200 trades each day.
LocalCryptos is also trying to pull its Finland rival LocalBitcoins’ customers. The firm said that users of LocalBitcoins could migrate to LocalCryptos with all their earned reputation so traders won’t need to start over on LocalCryptos.
