LVL Banking App’s Quiet Restructuring
Austin-based LVL allows users to spend their Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies without paying fees. At the end of July, LVL first announced to their customers that the platform will be shutting down current operations due to insufficient funding. Investors had previously promised funding, but withdrew their term sheets.
The broader Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and tech industries have recently experienced a lack of funding or withdrawal of funding, hiring freezes, and downsizing. It appears LVL is one of the latest companies undergoing restructuring.
Below is a reminder for their customers to withdraw all of their funds from the platform before August 30th.
The email states that the company’s first announcement occurred on July 29th and that the LVL app will be removed from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store by August 29th. The email further details that app features like trading, orders, and deposits will no longer be operational within the next few days.
Currently, no announcement or prompt for this development is readily viewable for site visitors on their website. The latest post on their blog is from March 1st, 2022 that details LVL V2 Beta where many of the same features for the current platform would be transferred over.
Some users were under the impression that the upgrade was still underway and that LVL would remain functional for their customers.
LVL’s own Twitter account does not have any announcement that a restructuring for the platform is occurring. The last tweet that was posted on their timeline was on April 25th communicating that the LVL platform will be experiencing some downtime.
After the reminder email sent to customers on August 8th, LVL CEO Chris Slaughter has been actively commenting on Twitter to clarify that LVL is not going bankrupt but was unable to receive financing in order to continue operations.
It appears this same situation is happening among other companies in the tech industry as a whole. In response to another company that had its Series A funding withdrawn, Slaughter says:
“We're going through almost the exact same scenario at @BankWithLVL. We had a Series A investor sign and then never fund. Just want you to know that you're not alone!”
A Twitter account by the name of Overton Windshield posted a portion of the LVL email where it reads that the company’s financing situation has become “complicated.”
The company’s Twitter account stated that there are plans for launching a new app with a new name. The exact date or timeline for the new platform has yet to be revealed.