NEWS: Poloniex is quite overloaded at the moment, the support is answering very slowly and the website itself is quite slow and using lots of your computers resources. At the moment, you can try Livecoin as a alternative for Altcoin trading. Poloniex is one of the most diverse cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. They provide a superb liquidity for the majority of altcoins, which can be traded against Bitcoin.Tristan D’Agosta founded the exchange in January of 2014. The Poloniex executive level is kept anonymous, probably because digital currencies are still a bit shady business and they don’t have a license for offering exchange services in the United States. The company is based in San Francisco, California. They are focused on the United States market but tend to attract altcoin traders from all over the world as well.

Verification on Poloniex

The account creation on Poloniex is rather simple and can be done in under 5 minutes. The user provides necessary information and needs to click on the confirmation email in order to complete the creation of an account.

The verification process is similar to the verification on other exchanges, and it has two levels. The first verification level requires email verification, first and last name as well as country of residence. When completed, the daily withdrawal is set to 2,000 US dollars, and margin trading is enabled. The second verification level requires personal information, address, phone number and a scan of photo ID (passport, national ID, driver’s license) and a picture of the user holding Photo ID. It can take a few days for the staff to review the submission and to verify the account. In the case of any problems, a user will be notified to contact support regarding the verification. When completed, this level of verification allows daily withdrawal limit of 25,000 US dollars. There’s also a third level of verification which can provide limits higher of 25,000 US dollars. Additional details about the requirements aren’t publicly available, so users or companies need to contact support. The exchange doesn’t support FIAT currencies. Deposits are possible only in digital currencies. The closest thing to FIAT currency is Tether USD, which is basically US dollar placed on the Blockchain. The support for digital currencies, on the other hand, is enormous:

Bitcoin (BTC)
Litecoin (LTC)
Dash (DASH)
Ethereum (ETH)
Zcash (ZEC)
Monero (XMR)

And over 80 other popular digital currencies are available for trading on Poloniex. The full list can be seen here for registered users, or on the live trading screen for non-registered users.

Poloniex Fees

The trading platform uses a standard maker-taker model which encourages market liquidity by rewarding the makers with a lower fee. It likewise results in a better market spread, because it motivates the makers to outbid each other. This model is particularly important for Poloniex since they are one of the most diverse exchanges with over 80 supported cryptocurrencies and it’s a significant challenge to provide a good liquidity for all of them. The users are charged according to the following fee schedule:

below 600 BTC – 0.15 percent for the maker, 0.25 percent for the taker
from 600 to 1,200 BTC – 0.14 percent for the maker, 0.24 percent for the taker
from 1,200 to 2,400 BTC – 0.12 percent for the maker, 0.22 percent for the taker
from 2,400 to 6,000 BTC – 0.10 percent for the maker, 0.20 percent for the taker
from 6,000 to 12,000 BTC – 0.08 percent for the maker, 0.16 percent for the taker
from 12,000 to 18,000 BTC – 0.05 percent for the maker, 0.14 percent for the taker
from 18,000 to 24,000 BTC – 0.02 percent for the maker, 0.12 percent for the taker
from 24,000 to 60,000 BTC – 0.00 percent for the maker, 0.10 percent for the taker
from 60,000 to 120,000 BTC – 0.00 percent for the maker, 0.08 percent for the taker
over 120,000 BTC – 0.00 percent for the maker, 0.05 percent for the taker

For lenders, there’s a 15 percent flat fee to earned interest. The fees calculation is based on the last 30 days of trading volume for each user and automatically adjusts the fees according to the volume. Deposits and withdrawals are free of charge on Poloniex.

Trading

The trading screen on the exchange is very smart. It offers multiple time frames, multiple-option candlesticks and both Fibonacci levels and Bollinger bands. This trading view is available for all of the 200+ trading pairs. There are four primary markets on the platform:

Bitcoin (BTC)
Ethereum (ETH)
Monero (XMR)
Tether (USDT)

Each market has its own box and all trading pairs listed below. During last year, Poloniex accounted for over 99 percent of Tether trading volume and remains the only market with high liquidity for Tether trading.

There are three main order types:

Buy
Sell
Stop Limit

These orders are available for all currency pairs. Similar to BTC-e, there’s a troll box – but despite the moderator’s effort, it can be malicious, and crooks are looking to trick the new users. Tip: it’s called “troll box” for a reason, information found in this public chat can’t be trusted. The exchange supports margin trading, and it offers 2.5x leverage on some currency pairs:

BTC/XMR
BTC/ETH
BTC/MAID
BTC/XRP
BTC/DASH
BTC/FCT
BTC/LTC
BTC/STR
BTC/BTS
BTC/CLAM
BTC/DOGE

There’s also a lending option, where users can offer or demand a loan with the certain interest rate. The exchange currently doesn’t offer to trade futures and derivates at the moment.

Ease of Use

The interface looks great, and it’s easy to use. Shifting between more than 200 trading pairs is quick, and the website looks great. There are no apps for Android and iOS, but the platform is responsive, and it looks good on mobile devices. Some third-party apps were made with Poloniex API, but the majority of users agree that these apps cannot be trusted, especially when it comes to trading with money.

Poloniex Customer support

The exchange offers support via email, ticket and directly from troll box. The fastest way to get the answer is by asking the moderators directly in troll box, but they are known for delays. The support isn’t one of the advantages of Poloniex – they take too long to respond, and the responses often aren’t complete. There’s also a knowledge base, but it isn’t extensive, and it covers only basic questions.

User experience of Poloniex.com

There are some scam reports related to Poloniex. Some of them accuse the exchange of tempering with Ethereum Classic and making organized pumps and dumps (artificially blowing the price up and then suddenly crashing it). The accusations remain without much evidence, but many users commented on the posts related to it. The scam accusations mainly come from the users who haven’t received free ETC at the time, so it’s fair to say that the majority of accusations were biased at the time of writing. The website of Poloniex is quite slow and it seems the developers did not do a good job here. Compared to other exchanges, it seems to use lots of resources in your Browser and if you have a couple of tabs opened at the same time, the performance of the site goes close to unusable.