LocalBitcoins Back Online Following 'Hardware Failure'

Global bitcoin marketplace LocalBitcoins is operating again following over six hours of downtime it attributed to a "hardware failure".

The company announced the outage at 20:22 UTC yesterday. By 03:02 it said the service was "back up and running", though it appears some site functionality – including user logins – is still problematic.

LocalBitcoins community manager 'Max' told Reddit the problem was related to the company's servers:

"It seems a server got hung up ... We're about to move to new equipment as the current servers are quite old, sad that they had to crash before we moved."

Two weeks ago, the Helsinki-based site announced upgrades to its servers that would log users out. It is unclear if the two events are linked.

Founded in 2012, the peer-to-peer marketplace matches local bitcoin buyers and sellers across 246 countries. Users have the option of transacting online or in person.

The company had not responded to a request for comment by press time.