Popular bitcoin buying/selling connecting service LocalBitcoins.com has been suffering from an extended outage this weekend, with its numerous users unable to access the website for hours.
The service — no stranger to periods of downtime — has remained rather quiet on this issue, leaving many questions what the issue is.
They have, however, shed some light.
Last posting on their twitter feed eleven hours ago (as of this writing), the service estimated an estimated time of repair to be approximately two hours — apologizing to users for the inconvenience.
More information came in the form of a brief post on the company’s blog website simply stating the following:
“Our server had gone down yesterday. The reason might be hardware failure. We are researching the issue and trying to get the site back up.”
A hardware failure most certainly would do it.
And since the servers could be hosted in an unmanned collocation facility (this is purely a guess, and we are not suggesting this is the case), it may be a matter of time before LocalBitcoins administrators or a technician can gain access to the company’s servers to make the appropriate repairs.
Regardless, users should be aware that the cause of downtime is not malicious in nature, nor does it mean that bitcoins in escrow are compromised.
For more information, you can stay tuned to the LocalBitcoins twitter account here and their official blog here.
