Circle Acquires Poloniex for $400 Million
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.
- Fortune Article: This Big Cryptocurrency Acquisition Could Create a Wall Street-Style Financial Giant
- Official Circle Press Release
- Official Poloniex Press Release
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!
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Can't believe Polo sold out to Circle for only $400 million. Maybe the price was low because of the Tether risks.
Could be, consider also that Polo has just gotten shit on by the crypto community as having terrible support and customer service.
I had similar experience with poloniex
I hope this buy will handle all this highlighted problems so that the website can meet customers satisfaction.
Yeah I feel like at least 50% of the people who use Polo end up saying their customer service is garbage. It's a terrible way to run a business and hopefully the Circle team will fix those issues, I have hope!
I really hope they fix it, I can remember opening a ticket for months without any reply. I look forward to a better experience with circle
Well, I have never used Poloniex since I had issues with their account verification and I was discouraged when I read about other people experiences. Some even told me they had lots of Steem tied up there for six months. But I'll sure read a lot more about them and if in the future, it holds more promises, I'll maybe get on board and try it out.
And about the story you asked that I should let you when I post it. You can check it now title The Jankin Brothers. Do have a great night rest.
Yeah, I had all the issues you mentioned and more! I know a lot of people who never even got verified for their account and even more who got their Steem tied up in the whole maintenance crisis... I think that's a good strategy - wait and see how Circle changes the Polo platform and if it fixes these issues, consider jumping on board! That's what I'm going to do. I still have my account over there, but I won't start using it again until these issues are resolved.
That's great to hear, I'll check it out as soon as I can, thanks @lordjames! Have a great night rest as well, my friend!
Their service should get much better - I'm hoping as good or even better than Coinbase. Circle already handles the money of many large firms and investors and I think that they post is a veery good
Thank you @khaleelkazi. Some great additional thoughts here on this news. Aside from the service/competition perspective, I view this from a finance angle. This acquisition further supports many thoughts that Wall Street has been playing both sides of the "trade", like the good old days (similar to Junk Bonds). Slam the asset class you want to get involved in, to buy cheap and to go long, establish strategic positions and then formally support the asset class through M&A, cap markets, market making (legitimacy/liquidity), research/analysis (recommendations) and long term investors (individuals/ investor funds). We have heard that prop desks at both Wall Street firms and hedge funds have been going long crypto. Now with this acquisition, GS is clearly supportive and indirectly involved (due to regulatory issues, they should not have directly ownership now, etc.) . This is another step towards greater legitimacy and acceptability. Lets now see what JPM, CB and the others to counter GS jumping in.
I self upvoted to move up my comment higher for your thoughts.
Hey @armentor, I absolutely agree with you and love seeing your financial perspective on this acquisition. You can most certainly see the pattern with Wall Street shitting on crypto, going long, and then formally supporting it. Seeing these patterns can be a great opportunity to buy low and hodl to the moon as Wall St. continually supports crypto in the future (which will undoubtedly happen over time). Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Ofcoz I am so excited about this news. I actually abandoned poloniex when they froze steemit account without a reason but I think I am gonna give them a try this time around. Good News I must say.
I'm in a similar boat - when I got my funds tied up in that whole ordeal, I decided never to use Polo again, but with this acquisition and these new changes that will hopefully happen soon, I will definitely give them a second chance!
This is really great news, we should see some improvement in the market. With the new acquisition, Poloniex services is bound to increase. And this shows alot of people believe in the future of crypto currencies
I absolutely agree @gaintshoulder! Their service should get much better - I'm hoping as good or even better than Coinbase. Circle already handles the money of many large firms and investors and I think that they could bring that level of service to the masses through Poloniex. We'll have to wait and see, but this could definitely bring a lot of confidence to the market!
A company that moves 2 billion a month is quite insane. I've never used Poloniex before so I can't speak about a certain experience. But I would like to see how Poloniex can compete with Coinbase. That will be interesting fees will drop on both saves best case scenario.
Yeah, it's crazy! I nearly fell out my chair when I first read that figure! Poloniex has had a lot of customer support issues in the past - account verification time, wallet maintenance, funds locked up, accounts lost, etc. Their support has been horrid in my experience and in the experience of many others out there (just do a google search of "Poloniex support" and you'll see what I'm talking about! It would be amazing if they compete with Coinbase, competition will bring lower fees and better service on both sides.
When you said weeks for an email that was just disappointing. I don't have much patience when it comes to that lol. Either way great article I learned something new.
Thanks for the news update.
I’ve heard so many negative feedbacks from Steemians that I didn’t bother verifying my account. Also it needed a webcam to live KYC or something thus I didn’t do it.
Interested to have one but I’ll wait for more people to use it first under new ownership. But what a great deal for the original guys to have sold it. I mean they couldn’t manage it well and couldn’t keep up with the rapid growth of users so what a good business deal to have sold it.
Thanks for reading @danielwong! Yeah, I had a horrid experience using Polo. It started off just fine, I got verified early on and didn't have any of those KYC issues. But when I started withdrawing money, wallets were constantly under "maintenance" and I had to wait weeks to get certain coins into my external wallets. Hopefully the service will be much better this time around, I look forward to seeing what the Circle team brings to Polo.
It is a great exit imo, they got a ton of money for a very young company that was destined to go out of business due to their inability to handle growth. Users have been dumping Polo like crazy!
I'm really hoping that this means support on Poloniex will become much better than it has been. I'm also very interested to see if they can really compete with Coinbase, but more competition is always a good thing.
I'm think this is pretty going to be pretty good for crypto in the end.
I do as well and I really think they will have far superior support now that Circle is taking the reins. Circle is a deep-pocketed firm that operates like a real firm rather than a "crypto firm". I think they can easily take over a large market share from Coinbase because CB has a lot of issues in terms of fees, processing times, etc. that shouldn't exist in a crypto landscape. If Circle can solve these issues with Polo, we'll see a huge spike in usage!
When I was first looking for an exchange, and an alternative for bitfinex, I asked the traders which ones they prefer. Unanimously, all of them told me to stay away from Poloniex for precisely the reasons you highlighted as your experience. Customer Service was the top one but that spoke to me about the issues that would cause you to use support. So people were not only experiencing problems, but ALSO having horrible support experience.
I am on Kraken right now for my main trading and Bittrex for smaller coins and playing.
I can't see using Poloniex until I hear back from you that they have completely overhauled their support. Looking forward to the discussion in this thread as well.
Thanks for the scoop!
Hey @zekepickleman! Yeah I would definitely stay away from Polo for the time being. At least until these customer support issues are resolved. I'm going to do my best to stay in the loop about it, because I actually would love to start using the platform again when all these issues are fixed.
I'm using Binance and Bittrex right now. Binance has really surprised me with their platform and customer support, it's my favorite exchange for Alts right now.
I'll keep you in the loop as well when I hear more about Polo's changes!