Why I have stopped using Poloniex Exchange completely now.
I would rather not walk off the edge if I can avoid it.
Introduction
A while back I posted about all the issues I had been having with the Poloniex Exchange and their appalling customer service.
At the time there were massive increases in overall Bitcoin and altcoin traffic - as always they used this as an excuse for the problems.
The thing I found strange were the many people appeared who appeared out of the woodwork to defend their terrible service.
I found their defence rather dubious at the time since I have been using Poloniex from the beginning and such problems have been occurring on a fairly regular basis.
Nothing has really changed in the last 3+ years. They have the exact same excuses and they have the same terrible customer service.
As one of the biggest exchanges they can't really keep giving the same excuses time after time. At some point increased traffic can hardly be a surprise and it becomes hard to believe.
It just smacks of failure to invest or simply not caring about customer experience. Both are big red flags.
From Bad to Worse
Over time the situation has actually become worse.
The last time I used their support it took me 5 days to get a response - an eternity in the age of cryptocurrency.
Further they have now disabled their trollbox so you can't even try to escalate a ticket that way.
They also seem to be having difficulty with Steem/SBD transfers to the point where it is causing all sorts of craziness on their market prices.
For those who are continuing to use Poloniex, my question would be:
At what point do you draw a line and say that you will no longer support an exchange that has so many problems?
Is the size of the exchange and the interface enough to justify the risk?
(Remember MT GOX and Mintpal were also once the biggest exchanges in their day.)
I have moved all my trading coins off Poloniex now and will not be using them again unless they make some big changes.
Trading is risky enough as it is and I don't need the behaviour of the exchange to make it worse.
A Poorly Run Business Will Fail Eventually
Of course I expect a whole host of people will pop up saying how perfect Poloniex is and how they have never had a problem there.
Others will say they love the interface so much that they can't use another exchange.
The funny thing is I have heard these exact same kind of responses when people were raising concerns about how other exchanges were operating.
The same thing happened with MT GOX, Mintpal, Cryptsy and many others.
People were complaining of problems and warning others but the warnings fell on deaf ears.
Those who had not experienced problems did not want to hear about it - when people think things are going great they don't want to be inconvenienced by uncomfortable truths.
Then when those exchanges failed they acted surprised as if there had been no warning - even though there had been ample warnings.
It seems to me that if the whole business of an exchange is built on shoddy foundations and incompetence then it is only a matter of time before they make a colossal screw up.
Not only that it also seems when it does inevitably happen it is easier for someone within those organisations to simply take any remaining customer funds and run off with them.
All it takes is one bad guy on the inside to do it and if it is a poorly run business they will likely not have bothered with the added security required to prevent this.
I don't know if anything like this will happen with Poloniex.
It could just be that they remain incompetent and have terrible customer service but I don't see why I should take the risk either way.
Conclusion
Before many of the previous exchange failures occured there were huge warning signs weeks and sometimes months in advance.
I liken it to a car engine that suddenly starts making a strange noise when it is functioning poorly.
Any sensible person would take it to a mechanic to find out what is wrong and get it fixed before it dies altogether.
Unfortunately with an exchange we have to rely on the people that run it to get it fixed.
If they have been unable or unwilling to do that then it makes sense to stop using it before it breaks down and takes your money with it.
The warnings are there. Whether you listen or not is up to you.
Thank you for reading
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Hm. I'm am using poloniex on daily basis for about 3 years now. Not for trading though, but as a price feed. But even that function doesn't work properly. Their site became very laggy in recent months. Additionally STEEM and SBD market price is not accurate, because whey disabled deposits and withdrawals.
Yes the site pretty much breaks under volume.
Mt. Gox took forever to collapse as well... with thousands of excuses like malleability and what not... With all of those horrible user experiences I really wonder how is it that there still has not been a panic...
Cryptsy also was rumoured like for years to be bankrupt until in the end they admitted it... Sorry to see that the exchange with the biggest volume for alts is making such headlines...
they did a good thing that they removed the chat... bringing all those people to steemit ;)
also reduced FUD and fomenting FOMO
For anyone who hasnt heard of Mt gox, it was first a trading platform for "magic the gathering" then turned into the by far largest bitcoin exchange. 850.000 Bitcoin got lost in 2014. After that mtgox announced to be insolvent.
People don't learn.
Totally starting to feel too much like like Mt. Gox. I just did a story on the odd margin trading bug I found today when closing my short positions:
https://steemit.com/poloniex/@cryptoblast/poloniex-found-a-bug-i-m-out
This is all starting to feel a bit too familiar. I hesitate to use the word Mt. Gox, but it feels quite similar right now. Confirmed bugs and long support lines give me no confidence in a very complex multi-currency exchange. Can anyone really trust them to manage that many wallets with high confidence? What about this odd margin issue? if my account has "phantom positions," how many other accounts have them as well?
I never use poloniex before, but my friend said it was good. And then this problem occure and people have their sbd pending. Its like they are not ready when this huge transaction came overnight. They should be more professional.
To have such a problem could make more people to switch to bittrex or blocktrades.
I wish bittrex and blocktrades wont have the same problem.
Or maybe you have another sugesstion where to trade?
Bittrex is best right now. Shapeshift and Blocktrades are good if you don't want to make an account and are willing to pay a higher price for convenience.
I switched to bittrex too
but I was always happy with polo experience wise
unfortunately .. many issues have been written about them so I made a switch
I feel the exact same way. The UI feels way better on polo but I also moved everything to bittrex. When I saw that my steem was locked up only till a few days ago. That was enough of a red flag for me to switch. I am thinking about signing up monthly with Coinigy as their UI is really nice.
the thing is that.... when an exchange becomes the top 1 it also becomes the most likely to be targeted.... same thing happened at mtgox... same thing with bitfinex now with poloniex... they will always target the top exchanges... it's either governments attacking those sites or thieves....
Maybe but it doesn't excuse complacency, incompetence and outright negligence which have all been factors in exchange collapses. Also in some cases the theft was from within the exchange.
even bittrex has been showing issues for people, many people have been saying that their deposits arent showing up
Never heard about that... Even if they had some issues the support is awesome, just write them a quick message and you will get an answer after 24hr or if it´s very busy it might take 48hr usually not.
Try contacting support if that happens. Every exchange has problems. How they deal with them is more important.
my deposit from Polo to Bittrex does not show up in my Bittrex wallet even though Polo says it was completed. I have the hash and checked the blockchain to confirm it should be there. Is that something that the Bittrex folks could help on?
+1 for Bittrex. I kept buying smaller coins on Poloniex only to find out that withdrawal had been "temporarily disabled".....for weeks. And I wasn't buying them in small quantities. I stopped using Poloniex a month ago.
I too switched to Bittrex. I change between Bittrex and Shapeshift depending on how quick I need to change coins into other coins.
Polo made me sweat too much when Siacoin was in limbo.
Bittrex acutally worked pretty pretty well. One problem i had though . I was desperately looking for my btc balance. Turned out that i left the name of another cryptocurrency in a small searchbar on bittrex. Even after relogging i couldnt find any balances. The searchbar wasn't easy to detect :)). Took me good 20minutes
Is blocktrades the same type of exchange that Polo is? Does it have the same availability of coins that Bittrex and Polo offer? If it doesn't then it really isn't an option
Poloniex is a joke...My fellow steemian family, we should have a few platforms to trade on. Prices are always changing and also the fees change on each platform.
REMEMBER: "A penny saved is a penny earned"
Diversity is a good idea in many fields.
Yes sir! "Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.................." ;)
Damn I do love their lending platform though.
Buen post! De gran utilidad para mi. Gracias por la advertencia. Upvote y resteem
Thank you for the heads up, buddy.
I had a few ETC on there but withdrew it all about a week back. Poloniex are blaming the Steemit developers for their issues so I definitely don't want their dubious stances to filter down to other currencies. Too risky.
Bless, my friend! :)
Thanks!
I switched to Bittrex a month ago when people began noticing that trades were taking longer, and I noticed a few issues. So the problems with Polo have been longer than just the last few days.
I haven't looked back since. Bittrex has been completely solid and easy to use.
Yes I agree. Bittrex are better.
shame that the Bittrex interfase sucks, especially the charts
I have been surprised more ppl haven't left Poloniex, it seems like the issues are constant lately.
Yes me too.
I stopped using poloniex a week before they started Temporarily disabled on some altcoins. Personally this sent shivers down my spine because I remember similar incident not so long ago with some exchange marketplaces you've mentioned that collapsed. @thecryptofiend tganks for addressing this so new minnows can learn to stay away from this imminent danger.
Yes it has happened many times before exchanges collapse.