Just 24 hours before HF 19, Poloniex did something they’ve done before, disabled the Steem and SBD wallets. In the past, it has only been a matter of hours before the wallet was back online and deposits returned to their rightful owners, but not this time.
In my case, and I’m sure others, I had a power down of a thousand shares plus in steem, coming out the same day as HF19 took effect. Without too much thought, I sent my coins on to Poloniex, secure in the belief that within an hour or so, I could cash them into bitcoin and move them into a wallet for conversion into dollars, but it didn’t happen quite like that.
By the end of the day, I was concerned. I sent a support message to Poloniex and got a reply the next day, telling me that the wallet was temporarily disabled. But, the exchange seemed to still be selling and still is selling steem. In fact, somehow, with the wallet disabled, thousands of bitcoin in steem has been bought and sold. Curious.
Meanwhile, we’ve watched our rewards, that had been somewhat inflated after the hardfork for many, dissipating, as the price of steem has headed south. While it’s impossible to say for sure, but the last time it happened to bitcoin, it was the poloniex exchange that caused the panic and the sell off. Could it be the same thing?
I’m not a highly technical guy, but I have to ask, are these really technical problems? Seems that within a week, a wallet could be built from scratch and tested. Is it possible that Poloniex is instead, manipulating the market into a sell off, which someone is using to their advantage as they trade over two million dollars in steem just today, while steemit users are locked out of that part of the exchange.
Then I notice this message from five days ago, about two days after the steem wallet shut down.
Due to ongoing network instability, we've disabled Ethereum deposits/withdrawals. We'll enable once we know the network is functioning properly.
And now that the wallet is apparently open for business, where the hell is my steem? I sent over a thousand coins there last Thursday. They are taking deposits again, but no steem. Is anyone else experiencing this as well?
So, here is what I intend to do. I will continue to update this story until the problem is fixed, and if it doesn’t get fixed, I will share my story to the ends of the crypto universe in the hope of convincing every coin user to avoid poloniex and their shifty, unresponsive way of doing business.