RE: Poloniex Crashing? $67,877+ in Unconfirmed Steem + SBD Deposits!
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The mania phase results in large deposits which then can no longer be withdrawn.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over nominal market prices of SBD because it attracts people to deposit SBD to sell for BTC, but the BTC cannot be withdrawn.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.
"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