Buying in February the American exchange Poloniex for $ 400 million, Circle, supported by Goldman Sachs, became a direct competitor to Coinbase, Bittrex and Kraken.
The new owner immediately began expanding the company through hiring new employees, and in the long term Circle wants to turn Poloniex into a licensed alternative trading system (ATS) and add to the exchange fiat couples.
Meanwhile, the exchange is trying to become more competitive among non-financial exchanges. Yesterday, on May 1, the trading platform announced three updates related to commissions (the last time it updated the commission in March 2016, when the price of bitcoin was about $ 415). So, on May 15, the following three updates will take effect:
Commissions will be calculated on a 30-day trading volume in US dollars, not in bitcoin. In connection with the volatility of bitcoin, the exchange decided to provide a more rational calculation, depending on how much the client trades in such volumes.
The general decrease in commissions. Their size will be reduced to 0.20%, and the starting fee will be reduced to 0.10% in accordance with the average commissions on the market.
Also, the exchange will reduce the 30-day limit on the volume of trades required to receive a discount. Commission for the makers will be zero with a trading volume of $ 7.5 million for a 30-day period; the commission for the buyers will be 0.10% with the volume of trades at $ 30 million for a 30-day period (for details see here).
In addition, before the purchase by Circle, the exchange informed about the update in 2018 of the system of identification and verification of users, as a result of which all the so-called legacy accounts will be verified in an obligatory form through the internal portal. However, the Exchange did not name the exact terms of this update, and trades on legacy-accounts are still ongoing.
