BitLendingClub, a bitcoin crowd-lending platform, has announced that it is going to discontinue its services.

This has been revealed by a Reddit post that included a letter from the company addressed to its customers. The company wrote:

“We've worked extremely hard to build a platform and a community which is uniquely positioned to provide the Bitcoin ecosystem with a greatly needed service. However, over the last year or so, the regulatory pressures has been increasing to the point that it is no longer feasible to maintain the operation of the platform. We are regretfully announcing that we will have to begin terminating the services effective immediately”.

It further said that it will maintain some minimal functionality allowing existing users to repay their loans and withdraw their funds. In particular, BitLendingClub clarified that there will be no new registrations, loan requests, verification of new users, investments or anything else.

“We will restrict the functionality of the website to either repaying a loan, depositing to repay or withdrawing funds”, it said, adding that it will begin restricting the functionality sometime next week. “The platform will remain operational with the limited functionality for 30 days after all loans are either repaid or written off (i.e. they have defaulted and are written off). After that we will be terminating the services completely. The expected termination date is approximately August 2017.”

The company emphasized that regulatory pressures have made business extremely difficult and it has reached a point where it is no longer feasible to run the platform and be compliant.

Launched in May 2014, BitLendingClub provided a peer-to-peer platform that brings bitcoin lenders and borrowers together. It received a €200,000 ($253,336) seed investment from European VC fund LAUNCHub in October 2014. BitLendingClub rebranded into Loanbase last year, however, it decided to move the P2P Bitcoin lending platform back to its old domain in September 2016.