Circle Acquires Poloniex for $400 Million

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Hey everyone! I just read a few articles this morning about Circle and just 3 hours ago, they announced that they are acquiring the Poloniex exchange.

First I'll talk about my experience with Poloniex in the past - it has been terrible. The first 2 exchanges I ever used were Coinbase and then Poloniex and like many other Steemians, I had thousands of dollars worth of Steem get tied up in the exchange and I was unable to transfer it out for months.

The Poloniex support team was equally dissapointing and took weeks to even respond and when I finally got a response, they simply said that they were working on the issue and didn't have an expected date of release for the funds. It was ridiculous, to say the least.

Given that story, I still may start using Poloniex again, depending on how this acquisition proceeds and which changes are implemented to the exchange. Circle is a very capable company and they have deep pockets and experience in the crypto space. Up until this point, they have been a haven for institutional investors and large firms.

The amount of money they handle each month was a huge surprise to me (all links will be at the end of this post, I recommend reading those articles as well):

Circle Trade is the primary reason behind Circle’s profitability. The desk handles more than $2 billion a month in cryptocurrency transactions with a minimum deal size of $250,000. (The biggest deals run as high as $200 million.) [1]

What Now?

My primary interest lies in what Circle is going to do with the Poloniex exchange. I'm hopeful that they will address the current issues and then add a "Coinbase-esque" feel to the platform. Like it or not, Coinbase is still the easiest exchange to transact crypto on and provides more security than any other exchange. I hope that Circle can bring these features to Poloniex as well. Here's what the Circle team said they're addressing first:

Firstly and immediately, you can expect Circle to address customer support and scale risk, compliance, and technical operations to bolster the existing product and platform. Poloniex achieved momentum and success with rocket ship velocity — a magnificent accomplishment, but one that also comes with whiplash. Circle is a global company with the skill and experience to help in these areas as an immediate priority.

As a consumer product company, we recognize that customer experience is a core element of product experience. When growing pains mean that onboarding takes extended time for someone, or information about the availability of wallets is lacking for a customer with funds in those wallets, or systems maintenance becomes necessary without notice — we fail to achieve our goals. [2]

I'm really glad that they addressed these issues in this press release. It shows that they're aware of all these customer support issues and wallet maintenance issues and that they will focus on making the UX better.

In the coming years, we expect to grow the Poloniex platform beyond its current incarnation as an exchange for only crypto assets. We envision a robust multi-sided distributed marketplace that can host tokens which represent everything of value: physical goods, fundraising and equity, real estate, creative productions such as works of art, music and literature, service leases and time-based rentals, credit, futures, and more. [2]

Thanks for reading and please go check out these 3 articles about the acquisition. They provide a lot of information about Circle as a company, how they will proceed with Poloniex as well as their long-term vision for crypto.

Here's the Question of The Day, don't forget to post your answers in the comments!

QOTD: What has your experience been like with Poloniex in the past? Are you excited to see what Circle does with the exchange? Do you think it could compete with Coinbase?

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave your thoughts below and I look forward to seeing you in the comments!