A Word of Caution for Poloniex Users and Traders

in #cryptocurrency8 years ago

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The Poloniex Crytpocurrency Exchange continues to have serious problems with trading and withdrawals.


The Poloniex exchange has had many issues over the past week or so with volume and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. They have mostly been unable to keep up with the increase of trading, which is a huge concern for traders and the cryptocurrency markets in general, since Poloniex is currently one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Just in the past two weeks, the exchange has had numerous ongoing issues with frozen coins, the inability to execute regular market orders, stop-losses, and margin trades, and there are currently long wait times for withdrawing currencies from the exchange, even with previously verified accounts.

Over the past 24 hours alone, STEEM-BTC trades were frozen on three different occasions. The first two trade stoppages were about 45 minutes long and the third lasted over 4 and a half hours! This is unfortunate, since Poloniex handles the most volume for STEEM/SBD trades by a large margin over other exchanges.


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This would be a cause for concern even if it was a one-time problem with the exchange. However, these have persisted for well over a week now with no end in sight. Poloniex has attributed this to a spike in volume and issued a press release on May 16th, but matters have yet to improve.

It should be noted that the stoppage of many trades has occurred just as markets begin to make large moves in either direction. It should be no surprise then that many users are outraged at the continued failures of the exchange. It's simply unacceptable for repeated failures like this to occur, especially when some trades in currency pairs can be executed while others cannot. There have even been many reported instances of some traders being able to trade while others cannot. If severe problems are occurring with the exchange, then all trades should probably be halted until the problems are corrected.

If these issues persist, I will be completely withdrawing from the Poloniex exchange.


I would encourage anyone who has funds at Poloniex to consider doing the same if things do not drastically improve very soon. Find an alternative exchange where you can trade and actually withdraw your money without severe delays. You do not want to be stuck with the inability to execute a trade or withdraw your money, especially if the exchange is under multiple attacks or cannot handle the load of increasing volume.

If you're using Poloniex, please proceed with caution.




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I have been on both Bittrex and Poloniex. The coins on both exchanges you can expect Bittrex to follow Poloniex. over the last couple of days I been watching the volume on both exchanges and Bittrex is now up to 15% of the volume of Poloniex.

The withdrawal fees may be higher but isn't it worth the peace of mind? At the time of this writing , I have been waiting on support at Poloniex for 11 days and my trading is halted because of it. I had one support ticket at Bittrex and it was answered within 4 hours and resolved. I regret moving back to Poloniex and when my support ticket is finally resolved, back to Bittrex i go.

Poloniex is in deep trouble and the only thing keeping it up is all the uneducated, non-researching noobs and their new money. The whales are relentless when the eternal lag occurs and they let their APIs drive down prices while all buy and sell functions are rendered useless. The Trollbox is never ending requests to mods to"escalate" tickets with no results and bans for those that raise their voices.

They are the leader in alt-cryptocurrencies exchanges and they are about to lose it as new exchanges have emerged. Poloniex is now the high school of exchanges and it is time to use others until Poloniex get their act together. This means a completely revamped interface and a staff to support 40,000+ users. 10 days to resolve a ticket is unacceptable in the crypto environment. High speed transactions require high speed support or it is worthless.

I have a support ticket that is "Being Processed" for 13 days now. I hate the Trollbox but I go in there daily to have a mod "escalate" my ticket. During my Trollbox visits, I watch the endless FUD when the lags and attacks come. Read my editorial on my observations and findings about Poloniex. https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@joebitcoin/crypto-at-the-crossroads-poloniex-epic-fail-opinion-editorial

I have already came to that same conclusion. I have started using Bittrex almost exclusively and on occasion I dabble with cryptopia, but I have my own concerns with the latter.

why do you guys love centralized exchanges? There is a DEX built on the same foundation as STEEM - Bitshares Dex.

I have opened up an account on Bittrex and will doing my purchases on there now on! Too many issues with polo

I started on bittrex when its fee was 0.0002 BTC to withdraw.... I switched to Poloniex because their fee is only 0.0001 BTC to withdraw. However, it appears the BTC network partially uses fees to prioritize things. I've had a withdrawal take 22 hours recently. So I started using bittrex again but their fee is now 0.001 btc which is 10x the cost of poloniex. It is stuff like this that makes me hopeful that one day we won't need to use BTC as a middleman to convert to fiat if we need to make purchases with fiat.

This is a valid point @dwinblood and one of the reasons I tell new traders/investors to move things other than BTC between exchanges. Coinbase is now allowing ETH and LTC sells and both of those are dramatically quicker.

Yeah, but using Coinbase is like asking the big brother: "Please, spy on me"

I am sure there will be more currency exchanges or another way to transact that is free or a smaller fraction than what either of these two charge. I do like the trollbox on polo though! Now following you @dwinblood.

It only means that all cryptocurrencies are dependent to bitcoin. Without it, we could not cash out.

Apparently coinbase will let you use LTC or ETH instead of BTC and I believe they have a VISA you can charge up too. So there may be other options. Also what you described is NOW. That could quickly change and with the slowness I expect it eventually will.

But the problem with coinbase is that they are not yet doing business towards our country, philippines.

Bitshares DEX is 0% fee to withdraw
0.07 BTS fee to trade, that's $0.063 - and that is currently HIGH because of the increase in BTS (what like 500 or 600% since the beginning of this year? Fees get adjusted once a quarter. Bitshares was paying its witnesses plenty when fees were much lower.
Decentralized? Yes. Low trading fees? Yes. Withdrawal limits? No.
The only reason why we don't have volume is because "the uneducated" wont trade there... idk out of stupidity?

Looks good, will try it out soon!

Going to try this exchange.

I've switched back to Bittrex recently, because I was noticing how long it was taking for deposits to happen. I've had no problem with Bittrex.

I'm moving my BTCs to Bittrex. Fck Polo. I'm not able to verify since a month!

Eh, I've transferred some SBD minutes before I saw your post.

OK, now I have some bitcoin sitting at Poloniex. I will withdraw them next week.

What is the alternative? Bittrex?

Bittrex is where I went. I think it's the second best option after Polo, but I would love to see other suggestions as well

Cool. I was first at Bittrex but switched to Poloniex because the rates are usually slightly better. And the volume is much higher.

Bittrex is fine with me. I'll do my next transaction there.

Thanks for the reply.

Volume may not be lower there for long, with all these people jumping ship from Poloniex. I've been slowly transferring my coins from there to Bittrex (and hardware wallets), as well.

I found polo so much better for short term trading for those reasons. Sadly, they have to fix their stuff before I consider coming back.

Bitshares DEX - go to openledger.io , but this is just a gateway into the Bitshares ecosystem.

bittrex sin duda sin problemas, le haría falta es un stop limit para ser lo maximo

Bittrex is reliable - quite unlike Poloniex which is either utter garbage or a total scam...

Polo was reliable for a long time too. The same thing can happen to bittrex as well if they aren't equipped to handle huge volume and mitigate repeated Ddos attacks. I hope bittrex is watching polo's struggles and making preparations to prevent these things from happening there.

Well bittrex fees are 10x more than Polo, but it does seem more reliable and faster.

The stress is 10x less :)

Well also... that is like $0.15 on Polo to wait 22 hours for your money (sometimes), and $1.50 on bittrex with almost no waiting.

Though if you use shapeshift.io that is like $6.00 which is high. Changelly.com looks like it might be worth using as it is just slightly under what bittrex charges.

I don't do much trading either, but a full day to go through made me agitated and sweaty!

I will be watching the situation and if polo gets their shit together, I will return. I prefer polo to bittrex by a significant margin.

I don't do a lot of trading... so doesn't matter much to me. I prefer it's fees... they certainly seem to be the lowest.

Poloniex is as dirty as Maxine Waters!

DAMN! That's dirty!

The answer is, decentralised exchanges! added with the ability to talk cross chains... both very soon will be a reality in my view.