Poloniex
USD, EUR, GBPCurrencies
USA 2015Country
Poloniex did not jump into the crypto market yesterday. The private company, based in Wilmington, DE, U.S.A, has been in operation since 2014. Tristan D’Agosta is the founder of Poloniex Inc.
According to Howmuch.net, Poloniex generates an average of $0.07M per day (figures as of March 2018). As of 25th December 2018, the company registered a trading volume of $64, 964, 126. In the last quarter of 2018, Poloniex has seen its website traffic decline, perhaps partly because it was a bear market. On average, it is getting about 6.8 million visitors per day.
Poloniex is more suitable for the intermediate or advanced user. That is because it is a trading platform. If you are new to crypto – in particular, you lack trading experience – you may have a heck of a time before you can execute your first trade. One of the reasons has to do with the fact that Poloniex only accepts exchange of digital assets. That alone poses some challenge to the first-time user who may not have a digital asset portfolio whatsoever. Also, the website features and interface are rather developed for the experienced trader. For the veteran trader, there are various trading tools for you, and you get to analyze price trends in technical, detailed charts. If you are new to all this; it can be confusing.
Although Poloniex security has been compromised back in 2014, where 12.3% of its BTC supply was wiped out by hackers, Poloniex still managed to get themselves a five-star reputation. Well, Poloniex reputation was intact until it was acquired by Circle.
The major issues are complaints regarding the unresponsive customer support, forcing customers to go through KYC protocol, and freezing of accounts for a certain period. For instance, This Reddit user says Poloniex has locked his account for no reason; the account has a balance of about $20,000. Not only has he missed out on a profit during this lock-time, but also Poloniex is yet to get back to him. Some people feel Poloniex is behaving in the same way MT.Gox did before going under. Yet another user says he lost 20 BTC on Poloniex Exchange – apparently, their customer service was unhelpful. Unfortunately, even the veterans do not get any preferential treatment, especially if you start showing signs of disloyalty. It does not matter how long you have been with them – they will take forever to resolve your issue if at all they get to it. Yet another reddit user says Poloniex stole his money, and that they are ignoring him.
Getting started on Poloniex is fairly simple. Head over to https://poloniex.com/ to create your user account. Click on ‘set up trading account’.
Poloniex is crypto-to-crypto Exchange. The platform does not accept fiat money like the USD, the YEN or the EURO. This means you first have to buy the coins somewhere else, like Coinbase, and then transfer the coins to Poloniex. Alternatively, you can buy their stablecoin known as USDC, and then trade the tokens for other digital coins. This is done by converting U.S. dollars into USDC tokens. Poloniex has wallets for all the different coins they have listed.
Let us assume you have gotten your coins from elsewhere, say Coinbase, for example. To fund your Poloniex account, you need to generate a deposit address, using your Poloniex account.
Go to Balance >> Deposits & Withdrawals. Next, tap on the deposit tab to see a list of coins offered. Select your preferred coin, hover to the far right side, and select an action (deposit or withdraw). In this case, you will click on ‘deposit’ to see your deposit address.
Once you have the deposit address, login into the wallet that has the coins you wish to transfer to Poloniex – it could be a desktop wallet like Electrum or the Trezor hardware wallet, depending on which coin you are holding. From there, navigate to the Send/withdraw option, and withdraw the coins to the address you grabbed from Poloniex. Wait for the transaction to confirm, and your coins should be in your Poloniex account ready to trade.
(Do you need a Hardware wallet to manage some of the coins you hold? Get the Trezor hardware wallet at a reduced price of 23%).
Some coins listed at Poloniex have a minimum deposit. This means you cannot start trading until you reach the required balance. You can make deposits in installments until you reach the required balance. Once the funds reflect in your account, navigate to the “Exchange” page, and hover to the far right side to explore the different markets, trading pairs along with the latest prices. You should see several tabs with labels for different coins. Click on your tab of preference to see the trading pairs available.
To start trading, simply select a tab of your choice, and then choose your trading pair. Next, scroll down the Buy or Sell section, and fill in the appropriate details depending on which trade you want. You can as well look through the Sell or buy order list to explore more options.
At Poloniex, account verification is a must. A while back, Poloniex had different verification levels. Some users would hold on to what was known as ‘Legacy accounts”. With a legacy account, you just had to provide basic information; you would get transfer limits of to $2,000 for deposits and withdraws.
Things have changed now as even legacy accounts have to submit full verification details; every new Poloniex user has to verify their account duly before they can start trading. You will be asked to provide details like a verification photo, a government ID, or a Passport. Once verified, you get a limit of up to $25,000 per day.
In 2018, Poloniex introduced a maker-taker fee that is based on the volume of dollars you will have traded within 30 days. Before, their pricing was set based on Bitcoin’s price, but the digital currency proved to be so volatile. Now, the fee is calculated based on the average price of the BTC-USD rate, calculated for every 24 hours.
Also, for every trade executed below $500K, the starting fee looks like this:
The fees considerably reduce if your 30-day trading volume goes above $500K.
f you trade more than $7.5M, the maker’s fee reduces all the way to 0%. In contrast, the taker’s fee reduces to 0.1% for trades above $30M – over a 30-day period.
If you opt for margin trading, there is interest payable to the customer who loans you the money. The interest is payable after the closure of a position. On top of paying the interest, Poloniex standard trading fees apply. Also, for every interest earned, a 15% cut goes to Poloniex.
Please note: although Poloniex charges no fees for deposits, you will have to pay a fee for each withdrawal you initiate – however, the fees payable do not go to Poloniex; you will be paying the network fees for the digital asset you will be withdrawing. Thus, fees vary depending on the network.
Poloniex has a mobile app for both Android and Apple users. The app was launched mid-year 2018 in July. It is a neat app with a useful interface. It comes with all the trading features offered on the desktop website. You get features like detailed charts, the ability to manage different coins, you get real-time updates for all markets, and you can set alerts for price movements. However, you cannot create stop limits using the app; you can only do so on the website. Some people feel the app could use more improvements: include a lending feature, make it more responsive, and maybe add a sorting feature.
Poloniex does not only monitor your account, but also it tracks both personal and anonymous data of their customers. This means that: on top of Poloniex having your personal data like names, contact info, and address; they get to collect info like IP address, your ISP info, your location, your browsing habits, and even view all blockchain analytics associated with your address/identifier.
If a legal entity or a regulator body approached Poloniex, and asked for specific information, Poloniex would have no alternative but to comply. However, they will ask for your consent in cases where a third-party wants access to your info. In situations where they do give third parties access to your data, it is purposefully to facilitate their services. To enhance security, Poloniex takes the following steps:
At the moment, Poloniex offers 80 coins and 133 trading pairs. Some coins previously listed have been delisted. Some of the coins with a higher trading volume listed include:
Before, Poloniex was open to all. However, the company recently updated its terms, where it restricted some countries from using its services. Restrictions are imposed on some states in the U.S. like New York, Washington, and New Hampshire. Other countries include Vietnam, Pakistan, Germany, and China.
Truly, Poloniex support system needs serious attention. The support is terribly slow. It takes forever before they can reply to your support ticket, possibly because of the overwhelming number of complaints lodged.
It can take up to a month before the respond to your query; sometimes they can ignore your ticket. Up to now, some users claim Poloniex has not responded to their support ticket while others claim it took Poloniex months to get back to them. Hopefully, that will change in the coming days.
You can earn money by staking crypto. Staking is a awesome way to maximize your holdings in staking crypto with Poloniex. Once you have staked your coins you can earn staking rewards on top of your Poloniex holdings and grow them by compounding future rewards.
Isn't Poloniex right for you? Check its best alternatives.
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