Poloniex Review
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Finding a trustworthy cryptocurrency exchange platform that doesn't require KYC is difficult. However, Poloniex has captured the attention of investors worldwide thanks to its impressive charting capabilities and range of assets. But how does it compare to the other available options? During our Poloniex review, we'll be discussing the exchange features, fees, and track record to help our readers decide whether the exchange is right for them.
https://poloniex.com/
Our Poloniex Review - Quick Verdict
While creating our Poloniex review, we carefully tested all essential aspects of the platform. After doing so, we determined that while the exchange provides excellent charting capabilities and a good range of supported assets, Poloniex does a lot well but nothing great. While the platform offers a reasonable number of assets and up to 100x leverage, the expensive fiat on-ramp, relatively high trading fees, and past security issues hinder its usability. While good for a no-KYC platform, better options are available to users who don't mind verifying their identity.
Poloniex Pros:
- Grid trading robot
- Good range of assets
- Up to 100:1 leverage
Poloniex Cons:
- Past security issues
- Expensive fiat on-ramp
- Poor customer support
Pros Explained
- Grid trading robot. Trading robots enable users to utilize high-frequency trading strategies with minimal effort. Poloniex's grid trading bot is a valuable feature that will appeal to advanced users familiar with using bots.
- Good range of assets. With over 300 cryptocurrencies and even more trading pairs available on Poloniex, it is a reasonable exchange that offers plenty of opportunities that traders can take advantage of.
- Up to 100:1 leverage. Those that use advanced trading strategies like scalping will be able to take advantage of the 100x leverage offered by Poloniex to boost their performance.
Cons Explained
- Past security issues. Unfortunately, one reason to be wary of Poloniex is its past security issues. In 2014, the exchange suffered a hack that resulted in the loss of 12.6% of its Bitcoin holdings. While things have improved since then, the SEC recently sued the business for $10 million, which is not ideal for customers.
- Expensive fiat on-ramp. There is no propriety support for fiat currencies built into Poloniex. Instead, users must purchase through Simplex, which charges a 3.5% fee which is too expensive.
- Poor customer support. The exchange has been known for its slow response times and terrible customer support. Poloniex has been rated 1.6/5 stars on TrustPilot and investors should proceed with caution.
Poloniex Compared & Alternatives
| Exchange | Crypto Assets | Trading Fees | Rating | Promotion | Website | Review |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Binance | 600+ | 0% to 0.1% | Rating | Up to $100 welcome bonus | Visit Binance | Binance Review |
 KuCoin | 806 | 0.1% | Rating | Up to 500 USDT in bonuses | Visit KuCoin | KuCoin Review |
 Kraken | 222 | 0.16% (maker) and 0.26% (taker) | Rating | None available at this time | Visit Kraken | Kraken Review |
Poloniex At A Glance
| Exchange Name | Poloniex |
|---|---|
| Features | Futures Trading, Grid Trading Robot, Polo Earn |
| Accepted Fiat Currencies | USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD, and 43 Others |
| Supported Cryptocurrencies | BTC, ETH, TRX, and 287 Others |
| Number of Trading Pairs | 460 |
| Trading Fees | 0.1450% (Maker) / 0.1550% (Taker) |
| Customer Support | AI Chatbot, Help Center Ticket System |
| Security Measures | 2FA, Device Management, Activity Logs |
| Mobile App | Yes (Android & IOS) |
Poloniex Overview
Poloniex is a popular exchange founded in 2014 and headquartered in Seychelles. Since its inception in the market, Poloniex has become a reliable platform for traders to speculate on the spot, margin, and futures markets. While unregulated, Poloniex is available worldwide. In 2019, The Tron Foundation, owned by Justin Sun, invested $100 Million into Poloniex 2019 to further develop the platform. As a result, Poloniex now offers a few Tron-centric features, including reduced trading fees for holders.
Review of the Top Features on Poloniex
Futures trading
Poloniex has expanded its product offering to include a margin exchange and futures contracts for those that want a platform to leverage trade crypto. The margin feature allows traders to borrow funds to increase the size of the trading position.
For higher leverage up to 100x, Poloniex has introduced Futures trading on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, and 35 other crypto-assets with 0.01% maker and 0.04% taker fees. With leverage, traders can take a long or short position on a crypto asset to hedge against volatility or a downtrend without using a specialized derivatives platform.
Grid trading
Crypto trading bots have rapidly grown in popularity as a way to trade without manually staring at charts and placing trades. While writing our Poloniex review, we noticed that the exchange platform offers its own grid trading bot.
Grid trading enables users to set up a series of parameters that will cause trades to execute automatically. First, the user must set upper and lower price bands for the bot to buy and sell within, then the robot will automatically create buy and sell orders at the predetermined prices.
While the grid trading bot Poloniex offers recommended strategies and shows estimated profit, it is possible to lose money with the bot. As such, the service is typically used by more experienced traders who strongly understand how the market and trading bots work. To see how Poloniex's bots compete with the most popular trading bots for crypto, read this comparison.
Poloniex Earn
Poloniex Earn enables gives the option for users to passively earn crypto rewards by staking their holdings. While it's limited to only USDD, Tron, BitTorrent, and WINK for staking, the assets yield between 4% and 8% APY which is reasonable and in line with other top staking platforms we've reviewed.
A benefit of staking cryptocurrencies on Poloniex is the no lock-up period and the ability to withdraw funds at any time to use on the exchange. However, while Poloniex staking is well-designed and a nice addition to the platform, the lack of supported proof-of-stake assets hinders its usability.
Poloniex TrollBox
The infamous Trollbox on Poloniex allows traders on the platform to participate in a community to share trade ideas and thoughts. Often misused in the past for shilling altcoins, the Trollbox can be a great source of information.
Creating and Verifying a Poloniex Account
Creating an account with Poloniex is free and takes only a few minutes to complete. The only information required to register with Poloniex is an email address and password. However, completing the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process is a must to access the higher withdrawal limit from $10,000 daily to $500,000. To complete the verification process, the user must provide a photo ID (passport, utility bill) and enter a few personal details like address and phone number.
Supported Cryptocurrencies and Trading Pairs
Altcoin traders can browse and select a wide variety of pairs to trade. There are 290 supported coins with pairings against BTC, TRX, ETH, BNB, and several stablecoins. In total, there are 485 tradable markets on Poloniex.
While Poloniex supports the most popular cryptocurrencies, its list of assets cannot compare to quality altcoins platforms like Binance, KuCoin, and Gate.io, which all boast thousands of trading pairs. As such, while Poloniex will likely be suitable for most people, anyone wishing to trade an extensive number of pairs could be better of with another platform.
Poloniex Fees
Poloniex has low trading fees starting at just 0.1450% (maker) and 0.1550% (taker). However, Poloniex utilizes a volume-based fee schedule meaning that costs are progressively reduced in line with transaction volume. Furthermore, users with a TRX balance higher than $49 can get a slight discount. Additionally, users can pay their fees using Tron (TRX) for a 30% discount.
For margin and leveraged traders using the Futures platform, Poloniex has a flat trading fee of 0.01% (maker) and 0.04% (taker). Considering that the taker fee for leverage orders used to be 0.075%, the exchange made an effort to reduce costs for its users.
| Trading Volume (30 day) | Trading Fee (Maker / Taker) |
|---|---|
| < $50K | 0.1450% / 0.1550% |
| < $50K + ≥$49 TRX | 0.1150% / 0.1250% |
| $50K - $1M | 0.1050% / 0.1200% |
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
While some cryptocurrency exchanges charge abhorrent fees for deposits and withdrawals, Poloniex only charges the standard blockchain transaction fee, although costs can vary based on network congestion,
Poloniex Fees Compared
The fees offered by Poloniex are competitive, but there are crypto exchanges that offer better rates such as Crypto.com and ByBit based on our reviews. Below, we've compared the spot fees between Poloniex and a few other leading trading platforms.
| Exchange Name | Trading Fee |
|---|---|
| Crypto.com | 0.075% |
| ByBit | 0.1% |
| Poloniex | 0.1450% (Maker) and 0.1550% (Taker) |
| Gemini | 0.4% - 1.99% |
Poloniex Ease of Use
The user interface on Poloniex has been significantly overhauled within the last 24 months to improve the trading experience. The new layout is user-friendly, visually appealing, and responsive on all devices, including tablets and mobile. In short, the modern user interface is suitable for beginners and advanced traders.
While researching for our Poloniex review, we found the exchange's trading interface easy to use and feature-rich. Poloniex has integrated TradingView, one of the most popular online charting platform for crypto. As a result, Poloniex users plot complex strategies and perform in-depth analyses without leaving the exchange.
Placing a trade on Poloniex will feel familiar for anyone that has previously used another crypto exchange. It uses an order book interface, meaning users can view existing buy and sell orders to gauge buyer sentiment. Furthermore, users can easily select their designed order type and leverage, making it excellent for people trading Bitcoin or other crypto assets.
One feature that sets Poloniex apart from other exchanges is that the charts don't refresh when switching assets, making it far easier to compare charts to find the best opportunity. Overall, Poloniex offers a well-designed trading interface with a plethora of useful tools. While the order book interface could confuse new users, it's easy to get to grips with.
Poloniex Mobile App
Poloniex has a mobile trading app available on IOS and Android devices. Based on customer feedback, the app has an average rating of 4.8/5 based on over 2000 reviews. After logging into the Poloniex app, the user is shown quick links to crucial features and a selection of trending assets.
Most features available on the desktop version have been carried across to the app allowing users to deposit funds, trade crypto, monitor positions, withdraw funds, and access Polo Earn at any time. As such, the app is suitable for beginners and advanced traders alike.
Performing technical analysis is tricky as only six basic indicators are present, including key tools like Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Exponential Moving Average (EMA). However, the mobile app offers no drawing capabilities, and although this is the case with most crypto exchange apps, it makes cryptocurrency trading much harder.
Users can select from six order five order types and engage in futures and spot trading. While the range of technical tools offered by the Poloniex mobile app is limited, the trading interface is intuitive and similar to other cryptocurrency exchanges.
Customer Support
The Poloniex exchange offers several ways for its users to receive prompt support. The platform provides support via Twitter and Telegram, but its help center is a good source of information with articles on account security, getting started, and more. There is an AI chatbot which isn't the best. Alternatively, the customer support team can be reached by submitting a ticket.
Although the Poloniex team aims to respond to users as quickly as possible, there have been reports of the exchange's response time being closer to a few days. This is evident with online reviews on TrustPilot that have rated Poloniex with 1.6/5 with a staggering 1-star rating from 80% of the total votes. Therefore, it might be worth looking into a few other exchanges for investors that prioritize speedy support.
Poloniex Security: Is It Safe?
Since the Poloniex exchange hack in 2014 that resulted in the Poloniex exchange losing about 12.3% of its total Bitcoin holdings, the exchange has not been involved in any security incidents. To make matters worse, there isn't clear information on its protection measures, it's challenging to trust Poloniex again.
Another issue for Poloniex was that on August 9, 2019, the exchange was fined $10 million in a lawsuit by the SEC for operating an unregistered digital asset exchange. US customers have since been banned from using the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
While Poloniex is generally considered a secure exchange, it has previously suffered a hack that led to millions of dollars in Bitcoin being stolen. Furthermore, while reviewing the exchange's security measures for our Poloniex review, we noted that the exchange needed to be more forthcoming about what protections are in place for users.
According to the Poloniex User Agreement, residents from the USA are not allowed to use the services of Poloniex. Individuals from the United States are strictly prohibited from creating an account and trading on the platform. Anyone residing in the US who wishes to trade crypto will need to find a platform that is licensed by FinCEN.
Established in 2014, Poloniex Inc is a cryptocurrency exchange located in Wilmington, Delaware, in the United States of America (USA). The global internet finance company Circle acquired the company. However, it's been reported that the company, which created the USDC stablecoin, lost over $150 million on its purchase.
Poloniex is currently the 33rd largest crypto spot exchange in the world by traffic, liquidity, and trading volumes. At the time of writing, Poloniex has processed approximately $71 million in daily trading volumes over the last 24 hours. The BTC/USDT trading pair on Poloniex has a liquidity score of 364. Because any score below 400 is relatively low compared to other popular exchanges, there might be better options for high-net-worth individuals than Poloniex.
Final Verdict and Scores
| Review Criteria | HWC Score |
|---|---|
| Features | 4 / 5 |
| Supported Fiat and Deposit Methods | 3 / 5 |
| Supported Crypto & Trading Pairs | 3.5 / 5 |
| Fees | 3.5 / 5 |
| Ease of Use | 4 / 5 |
| Customer support | 3.5 / 5 |
| Security Measures | 2.5 / 5 |
| Mobile App | 4 / 5 |
Poloniex has significantly improved its user interface and trading platform. The supported assets and markets are impressive which include spot, margin and futures with reasonable liquidity. However, we do not recommend using Poloniex due to the repetitive negative feedback on review websites. In our opinion, there are better alternatives with similar features than Poloniex to use without having to take the risk of missing deposits or lost funds.
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