It may be time to seek out a new crypto market provider as I am quickly losing confidence with Poloniex. I was initially drawn to Polo because of its size and the large number of different cryptocurrencies it supports. I tend to explore lots of different crypto-coins and it is convenient to have a marketplace which is easy to navigate and can efficiently trade across a wide range. I figured with Poloniex earning such a large customer base, they must be doing many things right.
I have been with Poloniex for more than a few months, but seen two very disturbing themes that has me wondering if it is time to abandon Polo for one of its competitors.
“Temporarily Disabled”
Although Poloniex supports many different coins, they often are disabled. This locks up value of any coins and delays trades. I get there are times where security issues must be investigated or trading stopped, but these should be temporary. From what I have seen, the feared “Temporarily Disabled” notification could stay for days, weeks, or even longer. What is the point of having coins in a market if you can’t get to them!
Even our beloved STEEM and Steem Dollars are currently disabled. Why? They give no reasons or estimated time for access to our assets.
Phantom Support
The support is terrible! You would think that a service oriented institution would focus on quickly engaging customers on their problems and working quickly to resolve issues. Happy customers are loyal customers.
I recently had some mining deposits, which worked fine in the past, not show up in my Polo account. I provided the block explorer transaction details that show the verified transfer and submitted a support ticket. I quickly received an email confirmation that they received my ticket. Then nothing…
No response. No update. No “we are working on this for you”. Nothing.
It has been over 20 days of pure silence. I have searched their help and FAQ’s which only state to not file more tickets, even if the delay seems unreasonable. No phone numbers to call. Nothing. Just a service Black Hole.
These actions and inactions do not enhance my confidence. Instead, as the customer, I know I have a choice. I have a voice. I get to choose with whom I do business and which ones I will advocate to others. Right now, if I were asked about Poloniex, I would advise people to stay away. Find another service provider that communicates better, treats its customers assets with better respect, and works with its user-base to quickly address issues.
Competitive Options?
My experiences and concerns are quickly leading me to conclude that it may be time to leave Poloniex for good.
But where should I go?
I want a secure market that supports a lot of different coins, with reasonable fees. I don’t think that is too much to ask. Here are some options I am looking into:
What does the Steemit community recommend?
What are your experiences with these markets? I don’t want to make the same mistake twice, by choosing a poor service provider. So, I would really appreciate your insights and experiences.
-Thanks.
Hello @mrosenquist
I only use Bittrex. One of the reasons is that it is one of the safest (maybe no1) exchanges in the cryptoworld.
Safety is very important when they have your money.
One time I did something completely wrong and the money was gone. They helped me and I got the money back, fantastic.
Not many exchanges do that if any.
Have a nice day!
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That is awesome! I am starting to lean towards Bittrex. It seems to support a huge number of different coins and many people say the same thing you said about good service.
Thanks for your insights!
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Hello again @Mrosenquist
Thanks for your reply and the honor with your upvote.
The thing I did completely wrong was that I did send money to Bittrex without the key to my wallet with them. So there was no way they could know where to put the money they got.
When I wrote to them and told what I had done and the time I did it, I got a reply from them within one our. They told me that they had found the transaction in their log. They told me to be patient because another guy would have to do the work of sending the money back to my wallet so I could do the transaction again if I wanted to. After a couple of ours the money was back in my wallet ;-)
They also told me how to do it right. I did not need the information, but anyhow it is the right thing to do.
I have been on Bittrex for two years and they have never been down to my knowledge. If a coins wallet on bittrex is down they clearly give you the reasons. They also have other warnings like a list of coins that have too low volume so they think it is easily exposed to market manipulation.
They also tell what coin they might suspend, why and when.
I know a couple of guys that have a company that have a coin on the market. It was them that advised me to use bittrex for safety reasons.
In the future history books:
The Steemians was very found of
@Mrosenquist and his security posts.
Made by @riosparada
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Now that is great customer service! Glad they put in the effort to track down the transaction to get your money back to you.
It is also nice to hear that when they do suspend a coin, the inform the users the reason. That is all anyone can ask!
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In the past I've still been able to trade these on Poloniex. Deposit and Withdrawals are suspended, but you could trade for BTC and cash that out. In the past I've used this to arbitrage and increase my holdings by trading then buying back in on another exchange at a lower rate.
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That is good to know.
Overall, I am just looking for a service provider that I can trust, is reliable, and will provide respectable customer service.
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Good luck! I haven't found that yet. Another sign we are in the earliest days of adoption.
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That is the silver-lining! :)
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I'll interested to see who you go for! I'll look forward to updates on who and why you chose a certain service provider. Good luck!
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Good point! I will let everyone know where I land and why.
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Polo, please give my Steem back!
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I've switched back to Bittrex with zero issues.
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I can recommend kraken! But they might be slow at the moment because of the big rush
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I hear they are experiencing growing pains! Do they support STEEM and SBD?
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Unfortunately no :(
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I'm having the same issue. Only difference is they actually responded to me, but basically said they won't send my deposit back to me, even though I can prove the transaction, and told me I would be credited my deposit when they figured out their problem. I just want money sent back me...
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LIKE I SAID!! TIME TO GET RID OF THE (BAD) MAN IN THE MIDDLE!!!
“Many (EXCHANGES) appeared to be Middle Men who got in to position and were there to take, screw and gauge as much as possible, some were just financial mafia skimming operations doing just enough to keep the pretence going until they collapsed. There were punishing exchange rates and processing fees too.”
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@worldsoulfusion/like-i-said-time-to-get-rid-of-the-man-in-the-middle
Crypto my A?%!!
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@worldsoulfusion/crypto-my-a
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If we minimize complexity, we also minimize risk!
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Been using Bittrex for more than 6 months now. Have not had one single problem. Not the best interface out there, but functionally is what counts!
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I will take reliability and trust over an interface. Thanks for the insights!
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I'm thinking about taking the jump to Bittrex to be honest. I've had SBD tied up depositing there for days now. Getting kind of annoying . . .
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I like what I see at Bittrex, with all the cryptocurrencies they support.
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I haven't checked it out yet, but I'm going to have to it looks like . . .
Do they want to dig into your personal information hardcore? Or are they on part with Poloniex in that regard?
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Not sure. It seems on par with others
Here is their privacy page. It has details: https://bittrex.com/Privacy.
I also found this FAQ which states they do follow KYC and AML standards.
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Seriously, try out bitshares.org
its a decentralized p2p exchange. volume is somewhat low, though the bitCNY and bitUSD have a good amount of volume. I'm done with polo. Too much sweating about whether or not they get compromised.
No margin... yet. But EOS will apparently be changing that.
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I will. I am not a margin trader, so not a downside for me.
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I hear Kraken and Bittrex are rising in popularity. Polo, not so much.
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Why don't you just use Shapeshift.io a decentralized exchange.
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Shapshift sounds great if I want to swap coins but I also like the idea of a centralized platform where I can manage dozens of different coins easily.
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I think it's time to gtfo of poloniex.
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I have a feeling I won't be the only person leaving if there services continue to falter and their customers continue to suffer.
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I'm on Hitbtc, not really having any trouble.
Oh yeah, there is still a trollbox :)
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I have not looked into HitBTC. I heard they have high fees.
Any pro/cons' from your perspective?
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After 2 months of using Hitbtc:
Pro:
Cons:
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Great information! Kinda odd about the support of small decimal increments. But overall, sounds worthy of looking into. I will add it to my research list. Thanks for the personal insights!
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Anytime.
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Bittrex is good. But all of these exchanges are having trouble keeping up. It'll get worse before it gets better.
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Seems like the surge of people and money into crypto is pushing the scale-ability boundaries for all these markets. Those who handle them well, in a professional manner, will win.
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The surge of money/interest is a big part of it. So is the rapidly increasing sophistication of trading bots, malicious actors, etc. Poloniex seems to have weathered previous storms like this in the past, so (despite the scary signals they're sending by providing inadequate reliability and crickets for customer service) I'm not ready to panic just yet. Currently, I'm looking at mitigating risk by spreading my activity across Poloniex, Bittrex, Cryptopia, and OKcoin - with OKcoin mostly for LTC range trading.
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I may do the same, in diversifying across a couple of trusted providers. I am a little concerned with OKcoin as I see China coming down with strong regulations. But that is just me.
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Concern over China's regulations seems fully warranted - but the LTC trading volumes on OKcoin are tempting me to risk it. My thinking is to never keep a balance greater than the daily withdraw limit, and maybe even move finds in/out for every trading session.
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No risk, no reward. Best of luck and be ready to pull-out at the first sign of trouble.
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Agreed. The question is, who will the losers be, and will our coins be at risk?
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That thought makes me shudder. (I am a security guy, I don't like the concept of LOSS)
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Would be nice to know a good site to migrate to when poloniex burns, or it becomes to unstable to be worth being on.
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I've noticed that Changely supports SBD. It kinda works like ShapeShift, if you've used it before. You send coin to an address they give you and they'll send the coin you want in exchange directly to a wallet you enter, if I'm not mistaken.
I'll try out Changely on my next withdrawal
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Let us know how it goes. What the experience is like and if the fees are reasonable.
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My apologies... It's actually changelly.com with the double "L"
I went there just now and I must say that it seems pretty fair to me. I just tried entering a 1SBD to BTC transaction to test it out, though the minimum is about 10SBD. It charges a 0.5% fee.
It says I would get 0.00055123 BTC for 1SBD, and that translates to about $1.45 at the current BTC price. It's not bad, considering SBD is trading for $1.53 right now: http://steemdollar.com
I don't have SBD to try it out now, but I will probably do that in a day or so.
I hope this helps :)
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Thanks for the info! I will take a look at both Changelly and ShapeShift. Although I am really looking for a market platform that can also hold dozens of coins.
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You're welcome :)
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I was still on the fence about leaving Poloniex, but this gives me the go ahead. I can't tolerate that!
Sorry for your experience though. I know it is inexplicably frustrating to be ignored when your money is on the line.
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Hi
I had the exact same worry yesterday! https://steemit.com/steemit/@beesteem/steem-temporarily-disabled-at-poloniex-com
I admire that you already checked other options. I think i ll have to do the same. It is all about trust. I wish you a wise decision. Unluckily, our STEEM is currently still locked up....
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I don't want to make the same mistake again. I will take my time and choose a good provider that is mutually beneficial.
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Sounds reasonable. No panic.
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I am thinking the same things. This has been pretty frustrating. It happened right around the HF, which lead me to believe it had something to do with the HF, but here we are getting close to 36 hours post HF and still it's disabled...
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My thoughts exactly
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I'm probably gonna leave Poloniex as well. I don't understand why so many coins are unavailable, and for days and weeks. I wanna put more Steem into my steemit account, but I cant!
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Frustrating! I feel your pain.
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Thanks chief!
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Yeah they accepted a transfer to them, never put it into my account, and never answered any of the multiple support tickets I opened with them. It is closing on a month now since that happened. I'll not touch them as a service now. Sure their charts are good, and their fee was the lowest, but all of that is meaningless if they steal my money.
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hey guys can you please downvote and unfollow disthanks!
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Have you tried bitshares?
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I have not. Does it support STEEM and SBD? What is its reputation?
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It's a decentralised exchange created by the co-founder of Steemit @dan.
It is basically an app you download to your computer then you have access to a range of trading pairs. Honestly I haven't used it much, I don't trade that often but it seems great. I am sure it has less liquidity than polo but its not a centralised exchange with all the associated counterparty risk.
https://bitshares.org/
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Thanks. I will add it to my research list.
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My approval of a withdrawal was pending for 12 days as well, however it did get approved in the end. They are just super busy but they should definitely hire a lot more staff
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