Poloniex.com Review – Pros and Cons of Trading at POLONIEX
- many altcoins tradable
- margin trading altcoins
- high liquidity
- tends to load slowly compared to others
- no advanced order types
- pump and dump culture
- poor support
- has been hacked in 2014
The use of leverage on Poloniex is not allowed for citizens of certain jurisdictions, such as from the UK, the US and some others. UK citizens are allowed to trade the spot market though, without access to the futures section. However, US citizens cannot signup with Poloniex.com at all.
Poloniex was founded in January 2014 by Tristan D’Agosta. The cryptocurrency exchange was formerly based in USA with registration address: 1013 Centre Rd, Suite 403-B, Wilmington, DE 19801. Poloniex is registered with FinCEN as a MSB (Money Services Business), registration number 31000055869515. Today the company Polo Digital Assets Ltd is registered in the Seychelles.
The trading site works only with cryptocurrencies and does not accept FIAT (e.g. USD). Daily trading volume of Poloniex is $577,246,085 / 231,083 BTC (06/2017).
How to Trade Bitcoin on Poloniex
In this article we will introduce Poloniex, the main components of the site, the trading process on it and everything you need to know to take advantage of the features it has to offer:
Sign up at Poloniex.com
Sign up is relatively easy with your name, country and email address. Providing only this information can be attractive for users who would like to remain anonymous.
However, to be able to withdraw large amounts you need to provide more information. You cannot use USD for deposits and withdrawals. Only USDT (Tether), which is a cryptocurrency tied to USD, is supported. After initial registration (Level 1) you get the right to withdraw cryptocurrencies up to $2,000.00 daily. For Level 2 verification you need to provide address, phone number, date of birth, passport id, scan of photo ID and picture of yourself holding Photo ID. Level 2 verification grants daily withdrawal limit of $25,000 USD equivalent.
There is also “Enhanced Verification” for individual or corporate accounts requiring limits more than $25,000 USD equivalent. Deposit/withdrawal options include plenty of cryptocurrencies. There is no minimum deposit amount for BTC but some cryptocurrencies have minimum amounts.
Create an (anonymous) account:
Poloniex does not offer a demo mode, as such it can be risky for beginners as they will need to try the platform with real money.
How to navigate:
On the left side you can see basic graph without advanced analysis options which is not the best option for advanced traders. However you can use more advanced graphs on TradingView. On the right side you can choose the cryptocurrency list which are paired with BTC, ETH, XMR or USDT.
Poloniex is probably the exchange which supports the most trading pairs. There are pairs such as BTC/LTC, ETH/GNT, XMR/BCN, USDT/DASH and many more.
Mobile App
There is no mobile app provided by Poloniex nor do they offer integration with MetaTrader. They do have a mobile friendly version of the web site however.
Also, you can use the following alternative apps for mobile trading on Poloniex: PoloTracker (Android), TabTrader (Android), Polo (iOS). There are no SMS or Email Trade Alerts.
How to make a Deposit/Withdrawal:
The first step to make a deposit is going to “Balances” and choosing “Deposits & withdrawals”. The option is found at the top of the website, to the left of “orders” and settings.
A new page listing all the supported cryptocurrencies will show up, you can filter it by removing empty wallets or use the search box to the right to find the currency you want to deposit.
Click on “deposit” and an address will be generated. Anything you send to that address will reflect in your balance in a matter of minutes (maybe hours for newer coins with smaller networks), if not, just get in touch with customer support and ask for help.
How to analyze the graphs
Charts are found in the “Exchange” page, along with markets and basic trading options. If you pass the mouse over the graphs, you will be presented statistics about the currently displayed pair for the selected date.
You can as well customize the charts, by picking a different date range, candlestick frequency and the lines to include. The level of personalization is not as high as it could be, but it is certainly enough for most traders.
How to place an order on Poloniex.com
Order types are limited to limit orders and stop-limit orders. Professional traders are missing advanced order types on this platform.
The trading interface is found below the charts, in the exchange page, accessible via the top menu. The process is extremely straightforward, requiring only to fill three or four fields (depending on the order type) and clicking either “buy” or “sell”.
Where to check your orders and current position
Scrolling further down, you find the list of orders currently open, market depth and then, your own active orders.
Finally, there is a table with trading history. By default it lists global trades, but with a single click you can switch the tab and browse your personal activity.
Margin Trading
In the end of 2018 Poloniex removed margin trading for traders from the US. The reason is that in the United States there are too many different jurisdictions from state to state, so to make sure that they comply with regulatory requirements in every region they decided to generally remove margin and lending products for US Americans.
Margin trading is possible with 100x leverage maximum for which you need to borrow funds and pay interest on them. Margin trading is not limited by verification level, however not all cryptocurrency pairs are available for margin trading. There is a nice opportunity for customers with unused funds to earn interest by using the lending function.
Critics of Poloniex
Couple years ago Poloniex was strongly criticized on the net for problematic withdrawals and extremely slow customer support. Market manipulation is also claimed by some, which say that the platform has behaved suspiciously during major events, such as the DAO hack.
There is even a website registered as “Poloniex scam”, but it targets Bitcoin itself too, and the claims in there seem unfounded.
Security
Poloniex offers Two-Factor Authentication using Google Authenticator.
On March 4th, 2014, about 12.3% of the BTC on Poloniex was stolen.
However after the hack Poloniex has repaid lost funds to the customers.
Customer Support
General opinion is that customer support is not at the necessary level for such an exchange. Customer support link forwards to FAQ page which has relatively little information. If you want to contact support you need to create another account for the support center and set another password, which is rather annoying. After that you can submit a ticket. Sometimes users can wait days or even weeks in order to get an answer to the support tickets. Interesting fact is that Poloniex recently disabled their trollbox in order to have more staff for support tickets.
Poloniex.com Site Performance
Poloniex is very often super annoying to use because of the site’s delay in reaction / slow server. If you click in the order field and type in a number, it happens that it feels like hours until this number actually appears in the field. Or you want to scroll down the site and nothing happens for another hours. This is really bad for a trading platform where it sometimes has to go quickly. Such a slow performance is a no-go for a trading platform.
Pros:
- (restricted) anonymous account
- margin trading
- lending function
- many cryptocurrency pairs
Cons:
- FIAT money such as USD is not supported
- no demo account
- lending interest rates paid for margin trading are usually high
Conclusion
Poloniex is certainly not for beginners. You need to already have cryptocurrency to start trading on Poloniex. However Poloniex is a industry leader in altcoin trading, many coins not available on major exchanges can be traded on Poloniex. Poloniex very often is DDOS’ed during peak trading hours, and customer support is not very responsive. It is only advised for experienced traders who don’t mind slow performance of the platform and customer support.