Bitcoin Exchange Poloniex Changes Terms of Use, Triggers Alarm

neno13 (7)in #bitcoin • 7 years ago

Bitcoin exchange Poloniex recently notified users of changes to the site’s terms of use, triggering some degree of alarm on the bitcoinmarkets subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6que0r/poloniex_just_suddenly_changed_their_terms_and/

"While Poloniex did not highlight the changes that were made, Reddit user NLNico parsed the document and composed a long list. There are some surprising changes, including bizarre items such as a claim to own anything that a user writes about the exchange on its social media accounts."

Users are also required to agree not to use a web crawler to access any of their pages and are informed that stop loss orders may not execute.

At the user’s expense

Additionally, there is such boilerplate as “Poloniex does not enable users to alternate tokens for money” and requiring customers to agree that they will no longer use the web page for any illegal activity. Poloniex would additionally like customers to be aware of that trading is unstable and they could lose money.

Probably most important of all, Poloniex states that they make no claims or guarantees about coins’ underlying networks and that there is no simple task that they’ll distribute forked tokens in the match that a chain cut up occurs on any network.

This possibly offers them criminal cover for deciding on now not to distribute Bitcoin Cash to holders of Bitcoin on the exchange.

Coming right away before the Bitcoin Cash tough fork, this terms of use replace is pretty curious. The specific language used in the revised phrases of use is: “you will have an opportunity to withdraw Tokens on at least one of nonetheless existant (sic) underlying networks.”

The implication is that, in the tournament of a community fork, Poloniex is solely responsible for providing customers with one of the tokens, now not necessarily each resulting tokens.

Under fire

Some on Reddit have argued that by using altering their phrases of use in this way, Poloniex may want to keep all Bitcoin Cash created from the fork, doubtlessly selling it themselves. As Bitcoin Cash is currently well worth thousands of dollars, this would signify a enormous supply of profit for Poloniex.

Poloniex has come below furnace lately, with rumors circulating that they are on the verge of insolvency. Many users have additionally noted the gradual response of customer service group of workers at the exchange.

Users have additionally been experiencing delays of nearly a month when attempting to withdraw dollars from the exchange. Recently Poloniex announced that it was closing its notorious “trollbox” in order to repurpose its personnel to reply to consumer tickets.