Pros & Cons
- No tedious verification process in place
- An extensive range of altcoins offered to buy and sell
- Real time exchange prices with responsive graphs displayed at all times
- Comes with an inbuilt wallet for crypto coins
- Quick withdrawals and deposits with no hassle
- Fixed flat fee which is reasonably low
- Customer support seems understaffed
- Poloniex yet to come out with a mobile application
- Limited deposit methods
Our Expert Rating
Average User Rating
Features
- One of the oldest and biggest cryptocurrency exchange platforms
- Offers margin trading and lending
- World’s most active digital asset exchange
- Auditing program to detect and suppress fraudulent activity proactively
- Online keeps active assets in wallet to suffice for trading
- Stop limit feature simplifies and automates trading on Poloniex
Exchange Info
- Country Where Poloniex is Based
- Wilmington, Delaware, United States of America
- Established
- January, 2014
- Available Currencies
- 90+ trading pairs offered on Poloniex
- Fees
- Very low to low
- Deposit Methods
- Withdrawal Methods
Poloniex Crypto Exchange – An overview
Digital currencies which are also known as crypto currencies, crypto coins or sometimes altcoins are being touted as the currencies of the future. As per several industry experts and economists, traditional fiat currencies such as the dollar or the pound may soon be a thing of the past. The fact is that traditional currencies are operated by financial institutions and reserve banks that operate on fractional reserves. Digital currencies, on the other hand, are a peer to peer payment system wherein there is no third party involved. This essentially means faster processing times, lower to non-existent processing fees, anonymous and secure transactions which can be untraceable, and a whole other host of benefits.
Some of the most popular cryptocurrencies at the time are crypto coins such as the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc. Given the surge in value of these cryptocurrencies, many people are interested and looking at buying in early while the prices continue to rise. However, buying altcoins seems to be easier said than done. When it comes to Bitcoins and other more popular crypto coins, buying and selling options are plenty, but try to buy some of the lesser known altcoins and you will be left wondering where to start. This is where cryptocurrency exchange platforms such as Poloniex comes into the picture. Poloneix is like a currency exchange, but for crypto currencies. It offers 90 plus different trading pairs to its customers. Poloniex charges a nominal and fixed commission which is 0.25% of the amount of any and all transactions.
Furthermore, Poloniex goes an extra mile and even offers users an in-built, out of the box, cryptocurrency wallet which provides them with an instant storage solution for their crypto coins. Another awesome feature with Poloniex that you are not likely to come across in any other crypto currency exchange platform is the fact that Poloniex offers a great deal of tools and information to their customers which gives them good insight into the trends and offers trading tips that really can really help one make the right decisions. Apart from trading crypto currencies, you can also, at any time, check the graph of any altcoin at a particular moment in time to see how it’s doing and how the trend has been before you decide to buy or sell it. In a way, Poloniex is not only a cryptocurrency exchange platform and a crypto coin wallet, but also a kind of personal advisor when it comes to trading altcoins.
Why Poloniex is in the CoinTrust Trust list
Getting into the CoinTrust Trust list is not easy. Not only does the crypto currency exchange have to be legitimate and pass external, third party audits, but it also has to be proven safe and secure from a cybersecurity standpoint. When it comes to Poloniex, we can safely say that it checks both boxes and more.
The way that Poloniex ensures that their funds are safe at all times is by keeping the majority of their funds in cold storage. Which means it is stored in an offline, air gapped system which is not accessible at all. Poloniex only keeps a minimal amount of their funding online which will suffice for active trading on a day to day ad hoc basis. This way, they greatly thwart the risk of exposure, cyber attacks and loss.
Furthermore, Poloneix also has an auditing program in place wherein exchange activity is monitored all day every day and any unusual pattern or activity will raise the alarm bells for a closer inspection. The transaction in question is then investigated and any suspicious activity is reported and blocked.
Users may further secure their own Poloniex accounts in just a few easy and self-explanatory steps. In order to secure your account, you will need to locate and click on the settings cog wheel icon at the top right of the webpage, this will bring up a menu from which you need to select ‘two – factor -authentication’, after clicking on two – factor – authentication, you can scan the bar code that appears using your mobile phone or you could manually enter the code into the Google Authenticator mobile application. Lastly, you can enter a password of your choice along with the six – digit code from the Google Authenticator application and turn on two – factor – authentication.
The advantage of having two – factor – authentication setup is that it uses two distinct authentication factors which essentially minimizes the security risks around granting access based on a single knowledge based entity or factor.
How does Poloniex fees work?
For a cryptocurrency exchange platform to survive, it will need to make some profits. The way that most exchange platforms achieve this is by charging commission fees on all of the transactions that are processed through the platform. Some platforms also generate revenue by allowing advertisers to use space on their webpages.
When it comes to Poloniex, the fee schedule follows a taker – maker principle wherein makers are usually charged minimal in order to further push people to ‘make’ and make the asset more liquefiable. This is why makers of liquidity are generally given a fee discount while takers usually have to bear the costs involved in terms of commission fees being charged by the exchange.
To simplify things, you can essentially map makers to sellers and takers to buyers. Buyers buy from the sellers and hence they have to bear the transaction fees, if any.
The fee schedule is calculated on a 24-hour basis, and every 24 hours, the last 30 days are taken into account and the fees are calculated for all the transactions that occurred within that time period.
For lenders who give out loans on Poloniex, they make money in terms of interest and Poloniex charges them a fixed 15% of their profits as commission fees.
New requirement for Poloniex customers – what you need to know!
Poloniex has long been known for being one of the few cryptocurrency exchanges that does not require verification to be able to make an account, buy and sell altcoins. However, given that the exchange has been trying to become compliant with US regulations, it seems like things are changing. Poloniexannounced in December of 2017 that it is going to be making offline all of their old user accounts wherein users had already registered and had begun actively trading prior to verification requirements being introduced onto the exchange platform. These accounts still continue to make transactions and buy and sell altcoins without having provided any identification documents as now mandated by law. Therefore, Poloniex has no other option at this point to go ahead and either have these legacy accounts complete the same verification process as what their new users are subjected to or they will have to go ahead and simply turn off such legacy accounts. If you happen to be someone who registered with Poloniex at an early stage and did not have to go through any verification, you might want to complete the verification procedure as soon as possible to ensure your account and crypto currency wallet is kept online. These requirements will be imposed before the end of the first quarter of 2018 revealed Poloniex in a press conference held in December of 2017.
Comprehending the concept of Stop-Limit on Poloniex
Stop limit is a feature on Poloniex which is super useful and highly popular amongst most of its users. Essentially, the feature serves to simplify trading and even automate some parts of it. Stop limit can also help in minimizing losses should you make transactions that turn out to be foul investments or bad decisions.
When you make a stop limit order, you are basically making a request to buy or sell as normal but the order will be placed when the highest bid or the lowest ask reaches a particular price which is referred to as the ‘stop’. Ergo, stop refers to the lowest, and limit refers to the highest. The amount of course is the number of altcoins that you are requesting to buy or sell.
So, if you are looking to buy some altcoins, then you can essentially place a stop limit order wherein you will be required to provide both the lowest and highest price that you are willing to pay for the order, the moment the price of the coin comes in between the specified range, the purchase will be made automatically for you by the stop limit feature.
Similarly, selling altcoins using the stop limit feature is also pretty straight forward. Once again, just go ahead and specify the lowest price and the highest price you are willing to accept for that altcoin and the moment price of the altcoin being sold comes within your provided range, the altcoins will be sold automatically by the stop limit feature.
The Poloniex Trollbox – What is it?
The Trollbox is just the name given for the forum at the Poloniex website. This is basically where registered users can post questions, answers and have discussions related to trading of altcoins in general. As a tradition, newbies are often subjected to some harmless trolling which is how the forum gets its name.
Closing thoughts
Poloniex has all the features that one would want from a dynamic and new age crypto currency exchange platform. Not only does it come with an inbuilt wallet, but also provides users with insights, tips and trends which greatly helps them in their day to day trading decisions. This exchange was one of the few exchanges that did not need customers to go through account verification, but has now had to go back on this decision because of legal mandates in the United States. However, their verification procedures are still very simplistic, timely and intuitive.
The exchange has been subject to a cyber attack once in March of 2014, but has since increased their security levels and protocols and have tightened up in all aspects, now most of their funds are stored in cold storage which makes it inaccessible to cyber hackers and attackers. Further, Poloniex encourages you to setup two factor authentication on your account for an added layer of security wherein your account will not be accessible to someone else even if your password were to be somehow become compromised.
The real-time graphs, the stop – limit feature, trend analysis and the opportunity to trade in over 90 different altcoin pairs makes for a holistic altcoin trading experience which not many other crypto currency exchange platforms can match up to.
The only caveat with Poloniex is their customer support network which seems to be understaffed and usually take a few business days to get back in touch.
All in all, Poloniex is a well – established exchange platform that has been running successfully for nearly three years now. If you are looking out for a crypto exchange for your trading needs, Poloniex might just be the right thing for you!
AuthorDavid Nugent
David is a forex trader and writer who has spent the last few years giving his opinion and spreading news about oncoming markets and trading tips. Besides from being a trader he is also a lifelong Everton fan and enjoys spending free time watching his beloved team in the premier league.
