WARNING: DO NOT USE POLONIEX!!!!!
by SGT, SGTreport.com
I must now publicly recommend that people investing in cryptos should NOT use "the world's most active digital asset exchange", Poloniex.
I opened an account on Poloniex in June and transferred some BTC to the account in order to buy a few various cryptos. One of those purchases was for 49,875 Bytecoins, an investment that is now worth around $997, a bit less than I paid if memory serves.
From day one of that purchase the account tab next to the value of those coins read "temporarily disabled."
I just discovered tonight that the same is now true with my Golem coins in the same account.
I logged back into the account tonight after receiving this message from my trusted friend Nick, who wrote:
I really think you should get it off poloniex. Ive been hearing a lot of whispers about things happening with them that are similar to mt gox right before they went down. Plus they just stopped washington state residents from being able to trade there because of some legislation Washington passed where poloniex would have to submit to an audit in order to operate there. Instead of doing an audit they made it so residents can't trade there. Gemini owned by the winklevoss twins submitted to an audit so why won't poloniex? Not a good sign at all. I moved my assets from there.
Nick's email sparked a thought, "Hey, I don't recall ever getting a response from Poloniex about those locked Bytecoins"...
So after logging in to my account tonight I decided to search for an answer to the "ticket" I opened requesting an explanation for WHY my Bytecoins were "temporarily disabled" (I guess to Poloniex "temporarily" means SIX WEEKS... and counting).
So I searched for and found that ticket. I submitted it on June 14th. Here's what I wrote:
And what is Poloniex's response six weeks later? "BEING PROCESSED"
I will soon be done with Poloniex, I just need to figure out what to do with the remaining coins that aren't "disabled". If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.
But the bottom line is this: If you use Poloniex to buy $1,000 worth of Bytecoin, or a handful of Golem, be prepared to lose ALL of your coins and your money.
And don't think for one minute that anyone at Poloniex will care.
UPDATE: August 2, 2017: Poloniex is down!
I agree. Some very sketchy stuff going on there. Almost 5% loans on BTC as well.
Poloniex is definitely extremely sketchy. Here's a link on the founder, Tristan D'Agosta. He has a music degree from Rutgers and is supposedly running Poloniex, really? Not to mention that his name is from the Italian royal family. The question isn't whether he's running Poloniex, the question is rather "Who is really running Poloniex?"
Unfortunately D'Agosta is not the only sketchy persona in cryptocurrency sphere. I've been looking more sceptically at Clif High and the Web Bot report lately as well. I would highly suggest having a look at my latest post on Clif High and what I've noticed.
Is there anything specific about CH and/or the Alta reports that makes you go "hmmm..."?
Well, yes.. All the things that I wrote in my blog post and follow on comments here.
Wow. That was quite a rabbit hole trip I just went down. =)
Glad I could help guide you down it ;-)
I've had a couple of issues with polo. Both times they were resolved, but I never received the info from polo, even after the coins arrived where they were supposed to it still send processing. Tonight after waiting several days for Steem to be tradable again on Polo, I just cashed them and sent the 750 in btc to blocktrade.....problem solved, Steem is in my account.
thanks for hint, currently have the issue with STEEM there but have not figured out how the blocktrade in steemit works. I'm looking for a tutorial to use other cryptocurrencies to get STEEM Power here.
If you go to your wallet and click on buy steem or steem power, you will automatically be sent to blocktrades. From blocktrades you can see which cryptos besides BTC can be used to buy steem. Once you complete that and the steem is in your wallet, just power it up.
thanks for the great help! That makes it clear to me.
If the coins are traded on Bittrex then send them there. So far no horror stories from Bittrex so seem to be a safe bet for the time being until you have your different wallet set up.
If it was just Bytecoin I would give them the benefit of the doubt because that was a pumped up shitcoin which also was compromised at the blockchain level. However, the approx 4 weeks of frozen EMC2 (no trading, no deposits/withdrawals), no apparent reason since other exchanges continued trading, without any notice or explanation was what made me go elsewhere.
Lot of scams popping up everywhere.
I recently started using Bittrex - they are in the US. They have google authenticator for an additional layer of security. they also promised to give BTC holders the same amount of Bitcoin Cash (unlike coinbase). They have a large selection of cryptos to choose from.
Although nothing bad has happened to me on Poloniex, the circle of people I know who've had freezes or missing deposits/withdrawals is getting wider. This includes family members and Steemit followers.
I would not trust them with a single penny of my money. Whether it's a coming exit scam or incompetence matters not, I've seen enough.
No wonder they shut the Trollbox...
About a month ago I tried to withdraw my funds in the form of litecoin from Poloniex, and my withdrawl was locked and set to "Pending review" for over a week, I had created a ticket about my problem and heard nothing and my ticket was never acknoledged or updated. It took 10 days for my Litecoin to finally be "approve" by whatever bullshit finally allowed my withdrawl. Again to this day, my support ticket was not updated. Felt pretty hopeless the whole time. Learned a lesson, maybe you will too.
Never again.
It's just like metal, man. If you don't hold it, you don't own it. In the case of crypto's the "it" is the private keys.
Move your coins to a wallet you own asap.
Never, ever, EVER keep coins on the exchange unless you actively trading them. Find and download any and all wallets you need and keep them safely offline, just like PMs.
Convert remaining cryptos to a main currency like LTC, DASH, ETH, etc so you easily move your assets offline into a wallet if you can't find one for the shitcoins. Then when you get approved on Bittrex or Kraken you can re-buy.
I like Exodus and MetaMask for most stuff, proprietary wallets for oddballs.
Good luck!