The LocalBitcoins Blog

Tales from the world of Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency

Changelog first quarter 2017

by Max

What happened during the first quarter of 2017 on LocalBitcoins? LocalBitcoins constantly makes small improvements to the site, this blogpost is a collection of all the publicly visible changes we've done during the first quarter of 2017.

Key changes

The most important and visible changes during the first quarter of 2017.

  • Jan-March Major improvements to the merchant invoice service.
    • Improved security for invoices
    • Full API support
    • Callback URL's
    • 0.5% fee of invoice amount
  • February 14th Advertisement wallet balance requirements lowered from 0.4 BTC to 0.2 BTC for online advertisements.
  • February 16th Trades can now be opened from buy Bitcoins online advertisements even when the seller does not have 0.2 BTC in the wallet.
  • February 17th Coupon feature and ATM ad features are now disabled, existing coupons and atm ads are still active.
  • February 17th Accounts will no longer be deleted
  • March 6th Implemented a new Bitcoin transaction fee model. Customers can now only send out their full wallet balance minus the current outgoing transaction fee. The fee is now shown in advance of making the transaction and wallet balances will no longer become negative.

The complete list of changes Jan 1st to March 31st

January 5th

  • First of a batch of improvements to the OAuth2 login process; cleaned up the layout and removed links.

January 9th

  • Further OAuth2 login process improvements: Simplified two-factor authentication, more link removals and notification to user of 2FA requirement.
  • It is now possible to cancel pending Phone verifications.

January 10th

  • New filters for the search form: SMS not required, ID not required.

January 11th

  • Invoices can be now paid straight from LocalBitcoins wallet by giving 2FA or password and pressing a button.

January 23rd

  • Advertisement equations guide updated.
  • More OAauth2 updates: Links removed from login guard and captcha pages.

January 30th

  • Displaying more info for the invoice owner. Small miscellaneous bug fixes to invoices.
  • Better instructions for P2P identification trades.
  • Improved helper text on oAuth authentication pages.
  • SMS notification messages shortened to improve deliverability with certain language translations.
  • New payment methods added:
    • French Lydia
    • Indian PayTM

February 2nd

  • API has new call, /api/real_name_verifiers/ , that fetches a list of users who have publicly verified the name of the user. This same functionality was removed from API calls that list your trades.

February 13th

  • Updated Terms of Service and guides, There is now a basic merchant tool guide available.

February 14th

  • In p2p identificated trades the buyer can mark the payment complete, even if the p2p identification phase isn't complete.

February 15th

  • Advertisement wallet visibility limit requirement now lowered from 0.4 BTC to 0.2 BTC.

February 16th

  • Buy Bitcoin online advertisements can be contacted even though the seller doesn't have 0.2 BTC in the wallet - the ads just don’t show up in the listings.
  • Improved phone number validation for phone verification.

February 17th

  • Coupon creation feature and ATM ad creation features are now disabled, existing coupons and atm ads are untouched.
  • Account deletion feature removed.

February 20th

  • Updated the FAQ and Introduction to trading Bitcoins online.
  • Added tutorial videos to FAQ

February 22nd

  • Updated ToS and FAQ, updated Data Retention Policy.
  • API call /api/wallet-addr/ now requires only READ permissions.
  • Image attachment file size limit is doubled, dimensions increased as well.

February 23rd

  • Old wallet addresses are now truncated on the wallet page. Deposits to old addresses still work, customers are just not able to see the full address.
  • API wallet calls have new fields that list receiving addresses in truncated form in order to prevent old address usage. API developers has been notified with mail.

February 27th

  • The green light next to user profiles names in listings now shows the median response time of trade chat messages instead of the last seen online time.

March 6th

  • Implemented a new Bitcoin transaction fee model. Customers can now only send out their full wallet balance minus the current outgoing transaction fee. The fee is now shown in advance of making the transaction and wallet balances will no longer become negative.

March 8th

  • Fixed a rare bug where some advertisements for non-native currencies were not showing up in their country of origin.

March 10th

  • Timestamps for all API calls are now displayed the same.

March 13th

  • Updated FAQ and fees page for new fee model and general corrections.
  • The location search box in the search form is replaced with a country dropdown when searching for online payment methods. If cash is selected as a payment method the country dropdown is changed to the traditional google location search box.

March 14th

  • Invoice wallet address is fetchable via the API.

March 15th

  • SEPA payment method added for the following locations: Gibraltar, San Marino, Jersey, Guernsey, and Isle of Man.
  • Advertisement forms now use 8 digits in bitcoin amount. Some rare rounding errors may still persist.

March 20th

  • Updated wording on the dashboard.
  • Updated the how to buy and how to sell guide.
  • API now has a call to mark trade partner as P2P identified.

March 27th

  • Fixed a bug where first purchase time on users public profile showed start time of first trade. Now it shows the trade release time of first completed trade.

March 31st

  • Last seen on status added to user profile and trade chat pages.