Hi Jerry,
I had a discussion with someone else about this before, and this is what I mentioned.
I had a think about what the issue is at Poloniex and it frightens me to think if I was correct, how deep the ramifications are.
My theory (which is just a guess)
Poloniex experienced a catestrophic loss of funds. This could either be through security issues or interal siphoning of funds - theft / embezzlement etc. Either way, the exchange is insolvent.
The exchange attempts to create a mania phase encouraging people to deposit anything and everything and then market making themselves with substantial volume that cannot be proven to be legitimate.
Highly inflated coins gives rise to many users with inflated portfolios, except, anyone who likely has a win from participating in these manipulated markets will find it troublesome to withdraw. At first, a few who made large wins will not be able to withdraw, then as more and more people report withdrawal issues, a systematic lockdown of funds will occur.
The mania phase results in large deposits which then can no longer be withdrawn. This gradually fills the 'hole' which the exchange created by market making each of their markets, and most likely front running a lot of the 'pump' with money not belonging to them ( probably from the capital base of the users )
Effectively, the inflated price of the markets there, are only held up by the fact that fewer people can actually 'realise' profit because it's not BTC when it's just a number on the exchange. It's BTC when you can withdraw it, and see it in your own wallet - an action which cannot be taken by an increasingly large base of users.
For me, I had a very substantial amount of money on Poloniex, none of which I have been able to withdraw since over a month ago. It has been complete silence from support despite multiple attempts to get any updates on why my withdrawals have remained in awaiting approval for over a month.
To answer your question in lamens terms :
Someone is willing to pay a premium over nominal market prices of SBD because it attracts people to deposit SBD to sell for BTC, but the BTC cannot be withdrawn. Poloniex could literally place orders at ridiculous prices with phantom btc.
I would be very surprised if I ever saw my money there again. I will assume it is lost and treat it as an expensive lesson.
As of right now, I will probably take advice from another friend on Steemit and avoid centralised exchanges altogether.
As far as Steem is concerned, it's pretty easy to audit Poloniex's STEEM and SBD deposits since they (foolishly) use a single account for all funds. https://steemd.com/@poloniex
It's possible that they are less than fully solvent with other currencies, maybe bitcoin, but I don't personally think so. Their Ethereum cold wallet has enough funds that they would be able to cover any withdrawals, and I would hope that they use good cold storage practices with bitcoin too. I think there's a lot of anxiety about how big the exchange has gotten so quickly, and I think they are experiencing growing pains moreso than insolvency.
Edit: Here's their old BTC cold storage address which got spread out between multiple multisig addresses that mostly still have their balances. https://blockchain.info/address/17irB8xLxhVRerCoUyypnmpoak3QBpVp2z
I keep some tokens there but I am reducing the amount I hold on central exchanges.
Thanks, yes i'm aware that this can be done this way. The greater concern is of course the rest of the site and their overall balance sheet.
Withdrawals stuck in limbo for 5 weeks, and no support from support ticket at all is not a good sign. There are many reasons why this could be, but at this point I can only assume given that I haven't got my money, and from their lack of response that they are defaulting on me.
I edited in links to some (relative) proof that they have funds. At least, as long as they haven't lost the keys to the funds.
thanks for that, obviously I hope you are right and I'm wrong.
Did you get the emails saying you had to click the approve withdrawal and then you clicked it but the withdrawal never went through? Or did something else happen?
I got the emails, and then clicked approve. Currently they are sitting in "Awaiting Approval" and have been for coming up to 6 weeks now.
I've also contacted support through their support ticket system, made about 1 new ticket every week or so. Zero replies.
That's crazy! I appreciate the warning because while this has not happened to me yet with Poloniex, I am not going to use it anymore until you and everyone else commenting has their deposits!
They have $500 of my SBD and same with @matt-a --- Mine has been lost on a deposit to them over a week now.
It can be easily seen in my wallet or on SteemD.com etc
That was my money I won to go to SteemFest
Oh no! That really hurts :-(
I've transferred 500 Steem to them a couple of days ago since I had no idea about their issues and am waiting for them to be displayed, too.
Crossing my fingers for yours to appear soon! You definitely must go to SteemFest!!!
Aw Marly that is so nice of you.
It is always nice to hear from you sister.
I hear you may be coming to Canadastan at some point, so here is the most Canadian thing you might read all year for our 150th Anniversary here...
https://steemit.com/life/@barrydutton/well-today-is-canada-s-150th-birthday-here-in-canadastan-the-government-fails-humanity-daily-but-team-together-everyone-achieves
Thanks for the concern!
"as long as they haven't lost the keys to the funds" wow that would be more epic and probable than theft!
"avoid centralised exchanges altogether."
Luckily, we have BitShares for this!
Wise decision to avoid centralised exchanges... From a business point of view it is not acceptable that they do not communicate with their customers on such an important issue within 5 hours at least... But not getting any answers for a whole month???
Regarding your theory of luring in deposits by buying everything with phantom BTC's I think this strategy would not be realistic. I was wondering about the high SBD price as well... for months already... but the price is very high as well on the internal decentralized exchange. Like 1.80 USD for 1 SBD. How can that be?
Totaly agree with you man
Hi, if you are new to crypto i sincerely think you should use telegram
https://t.me/PumpsNotifier
they Provide Free Cryptocurrency Trading Signals for Pumps on a regular basis. just join group and follow and reap rewards for consistent profit
I had a hell of a time taking all of my STEEM off of Poloniex when I was buying my SP. Let me just put it that way. It took me weeks/months. I finished powering up around Febuary of this year I think.... had several withdrawals in limbo. So I am not surprised by all of this. Not sure what the reason is as other exchanges such as Bittrex do not have this issue.
Yeah, I've been using Bittrex for over a year now and have never had any problems with it. Would definitely recommend it to others.
They have $500 of my SBD and same with @matt-a --- Mine has been lost on a deposit to them over a week now.
It can be easily seen in my wallet or on SteemD.com etc
That was my money I won to go to SteemFest
@thejohalfiles thank you very much for your upvotes and sharing your experience with Poloniex here with us!
No worries at all
@sweetsssj thank you for sharing this because while I am not sure exactly what has specifically happened, what you have shared combined with what else I read leads me to believe they have picked up some shameful secret they are not telling us about and they are scrambling to keep everything going before it comes out! While they turned off the discussion due to "needing support elsewhere" one of the first steps when something bad happens is often to stop people from talking about it. Killing the chat box to me was an ominous sign that encouraged me to withdraw everything right away and I wish you luck in getting your withdrawal complete! I am very grateful today I was able to get mine off just before everything started getting crazy!
I'm so glad that you have protected yourself from this enormous counter-party risk before anything ominous really happens.
I'm not sure why it is that some people seem to have no problems withdrawing whilst an army of others have been having problems for months. Me being one of them.
I read The Willy Report some time a go which goes through all the events leading up to and after the demise of gox. It's eerie how similar poloniex's recent actions have played out.
When something is usually too good to be true, it usually is, and Poloniex have certainly created quite the lucrative market on their exchange perfectly conducive to luring in a very large and significant part of the crypto community. Whether or not it turns out as bad as mt gox, if bad at all, remains to be seen. But I certainly have my skin in the game. Nervous times for me!
Tonight I just got my SBD deposit into Poloniex, traded to Bitcoin, and then completed a withdrawal to Coinbase in about an hour which was surprising because I did not think it would work! For your deposits in limbo, did you ever get the emails asking to confirm withdrawal? I think my withdrawals say awaiting approval until I click the link in the email confirming I want to complete the withdrawal. Is there a way to resend the email or did you already go through all that and nothing worked?
I've been able to withdraw from Polo, but I'm withdrawing small amounts at a time (less than half a bitcoin).
I think they're manually approving large withdrawals, so do small withdrawals every day instead (it will cost you 10,000 satoshis in fees each time, but that's a pittance to pay to get your money out).
I've heard too that old accounts are having no problems with withdrawals but newer accounts afre struggling.
I can say the same thing. I made a withdrawal request but, first I had to verify my account.
Problem with the theory is that Poloniex is a US company. In the US how a catastrophic loss of funds works at a business is as follows:
The reason people in the US generally go that route is that if they did what you suggest, they would go to jail. To avoid jail time in the US, it's easier to just go bankrupt. The management and ownership can keep their big salaries and dividends and stay out of jail.
So it does happen in the US that businesses commit fraud, but really, these people never are thinking straight. It's simpler to go bankrupt which is basically like a gimme for a business. Sometimes they're allowed to restructure even. Sometimes if it was theft and they were insured, insurance could cover the loss.
exact same thing has happened to me their wallet was on maintenance they had temp disabled deposit/withdraw but then later or warning went away and they were accepting deposits on SBD so i went ahead an deposited by SBD to poloniex and boom they just like forgot about and and funny thing is they actually now have auto response to u saying wallet is under maintenance if it is then why have they allowed the deposit in first place?
secondly i can clearly see the transactions happening in their wallet both in and out and even some SBD were sent to others from poloniex so what is it? as far as i know if wallet is under maintenance it should not be used right?
i have a whole post written about it check it out if u can with pictures and stuff! thanks. goodluck to you and me both lol
https://steemit.com/poloniex/@shariqriaz/poloniex-is-lying-about-their-sbd-wallet-maintenance
Hi, if you are new to crypto i sincerely think you should use telegram
https://t.me/PumpsNotifier
they Provide Free Cryptocurrency Trading Signals for Pumps on a regular basis. just join group and follow and reap rewards for consistent profit
the only solution i could give for everyone who is willing to withdraw their money either SBD or Steem is to use Bittrex,
if people have Bittrex as a choice why they still putting their money in Poloneix, I have a friend who lost $3000 worth of SBD in Poloneix 3 months ago, and he still did not get any response from Poloneix support.
Be wise guys you still have a Bittrex as choice, I already told too many Steemians that I know to avoid Poloneix, until everything is back to normal.
problem with bittrex is their interface, it's just not as user friendly as POLO, thats why people stay on POLO, it's like you have 1 screen for trades and you switch between you currencies easily, whereas BITTREX it's just hard to keep an eye on movements without being on the home page not looking at charts.
this to me is bullshit.
I have at times up to 60 btc on polo, withdrawing daily around 10btc, no issues so far last months... do not understand why you think they would be insolvent. steem is not a very relevant currency in the total balance sheet of them anyway.
Alttrader you obviously suffer from selective reading. I have a fully verified level 2 account. I have had it for about a year. I have made withdrawal requests since May. None have gone through. Just stuck in awaiting approval. I have made support tickets to no avail.
Like I said. There are people who will withdraw fine. But a growing number of people can't . If you look at what happened in the last with gox and what happened leading up to them shutting down, it's no different. For me it might as well be as if they defaulted because I have never had to wait 45 days and counting for a custodian of my money to release it to me when I request it. Let alone fail to communicate to me in the slightest.
I use a bunch of exchanges. At no other exchange do I encounter withdrawal that is "temporarily disabled". It's bizarre and very recent. I'd been using Poloniex for eighteen months prior to to this happening in the past two months.
No exchange should limit you at all to how much of your money you want to withdraw! To me its bull shit one can only withdraw only 10 BTC and not an entire wallet to put into cold storage. That right there is red flags to me. Withdrawing entire balances on coinbase, kraken, or CEX.IO are never limited especially for crypto.
Very informative
Hi @sweetsssj
I still believe that you could get your money. There might just have been glitches that caused some transactions not working as normal. I love reading your travel posts so much. You are such a blessed person in this world.
Ronald Jay Rama @ronaldjayrama
hah you should write a Crypto Thriller novel about this :) It would be an exciting TV show to produce!
Openledger.io check it out ! so cool so many coins just neeeds more liquidity and users but its still possible to buy relatively small to medium amounts...bitshares tho its so cool! but Poloniex will be fine! They telepathically send me messages explaining whats going on..Oh whats that Poloniex? Oh theyre telling me...theyre saying they just have alot of technical errors in their wallet systems and its just alot of transactions and they cant REVEAL what technical difficulties they are experiencing because revealing that vulnerability will open them up to hackers and theft ... But Open ledger is sooo cool! u can use it to buy bitcoin using SBD or steem! U can even buy tether! It is a miracle and Bitshares is the best and problems like this will allow bitshares to become like steemit's little brother that becomes taller than steemit!
thanks for the informative write up about your experience
i also had trouble getting a reply from bittrex and am using changelly
Changelly has terrible exchange rates. How do you cope? I have always refused to work with Changelly because of this. Please comment buddy.
seems it is better to get a larger exchange charge and have it occur than be waiting weeks like people are on poloniex - i respect your opinion though you haven't said who you are using
I use all kinds of storage. Paper wallets, nodes, bitcoin.de, bittrex, poloniex, coinbase, kraken, etc.. I have never sold any crypto, only mine. I have always stumbled accross Changelly, but everytime I wanted to execute a transaction I got so pissed off, the BTC price etc. is so far off and unjustified that I started to coagulate. I mine Dash, XMR, ETH, SC, UBQ, BCN, ZEC. I don't trust anything I can't touch. Too many bad experiences good buddy.
looks like you know what your doing - i will keep an eye on your posts to see your advice too
Haa ha ha haaaa, no worries. You just made me feel like this:
awesome
Very educating
"Catastrophic loss of funds" - yikes! Please don't say stuff like this... or at least please don't let them be true... As someone who lost 110 LTC at Cryptsy (and probably one of the less affected) it's painful to think of another exchange going bust. It was even worse because immediately after reading this I withdrew about 1 BTC worth of MAID and the transaction failed and I thought I'd lost it. However a few hours after filing a support ticket the transaction was re-done and I got my MAID out. But for a minute there is scared me pretty good.
I honestly think their issues are just caused by scaling problems - even the biggest guys with nine-figure VC investment and billions on deposit have issues that are pissing their customers off (I won't name names but I'm sure you can guess).
I totally agree about decentralized exchanges - we so need them and we so need liquidity in them. I've used the one on the WAVES network and it was fine - good liquidity for the WAVES/BTC pair.
I have had real problems with Poloniex and reported about it here in Steemit and Facebook. Nobody was really reacting to it. For me there is no question, the figures on your screen are only figures. These are typical habits of brokers, banks and exchanges, typical. I can explain it like this: When you pay funds into an insurance policy, that money is reinvested by the insurance company into other asset classes, you are left with a piece of paper with writing on it. What can protect you? Multiple accounts, multiple assets, focus on "physical". I have been a trader and investor for 30 years, you can't believe how many times I have been scammed... and lost and lost and lost and lost...
I don't like polo and liquidated yesterday, I had to do it in BTS, the transfer worked instantly, not sure if this info might help or not.
Pretty happy I found Steemit recently, as it has opened my eyes to Poloniex. This is feeling more and more like Mt. Gox with each passing day. Maybe that isn't quite fair, as Mt. Gox truly was incompetent. Poloniex may be a case of biting off way more than they can chew. One possible vector not mentioned is that Poloniex is likely still filled with bugs across their expansive platform. Managing that many currencies, that many wallets is likely to be a monumental task. The slow response from support reported across many channels is not encouraging either. My personal issue is quite relevant and highlights one bug:
Recently I closed multiple margin positions. I shorted ETH, LTC, XRP, and DASH vs. BTC. After closing all of my positions, a few hours later Poloniex still thinks I have some position and is still calculating a borrowing cost after I have withdrawn all funds possible:
Total Margin Value 0.01475918 BTC
Unrealized P/L 0.00000000 BTC
Unrealized Lending Fees -0.00000004 BTC
Net Value 0.01475914 BTC
Total Borrowed Value 0.02176298 BTC
Mind you I have no positions open. The amount of "Total Borrowed Value" is the amount Poloniex believes I still hold a position for, yet I have no open positions, short or long. At this stage I am uncomfortable having any funds on Poloniex and likely won't be going through the grueling support process for the small sum currently stuck in margin-limbo.
I personally wouldnt be using margin or shorting any thing. Only because the crypto exchanges have so many bugs, they are not clear on rules, they have little to no obligation to you or any regulations that will keep them in check, so they do right for customers. This is possibly a disaster brewing to happen. Buy coins, invest for medium to long term. And keep those coins in cold storage were u control the keys.
Thanks for the information
Hi, if you are new to cryptocurrency i sincerely think you should use telegram
https://t.me/PumpsNotifier
they Provide Free Cryptocurrency Trading Signals for Pumps on a regular basis. just join group and follow and reap rewards for consistent profit
kindly cite examples of decentralized exchanges
bitshares !
That's right, the answer to all these problems is---bitshares! Everybody, all together now....bitshares and openledger!