I am sure this post will get lot's of hate, but I just can't keep this to myself anymore. There are more and more signs that this exchange is headed down the same path that previous, eventually fraudulent, exchanges took.
I am not writing this because I lost money on Poloniex. Oh no, actually I made decent money the last 2 weeks on Poloniex. Believe it or not, during this volatility in the last 2 weeks I turned 3.5$ into 680$. So no, this is not because I feel I got scammed and I lost my money, I am posting this because I have been on Poloniex for 2 years now and I have noticed some things. I have noticed things that are timed so perfectly that it allows the scams to happen. The worst part, is that these scams have collusion between the pumpers and the exchange.
If you were on Poloniex last year, then you might remember the lag that came during the most opportunistic trading times. If you were there during the "DAO HACK" (which was a scam plan), Poloniex made it impossible for people to trade while the epic dump happened. Little did people know, during this time if you went on your mobile phone they allowed your orders to go through. That same "lag" happens whenever there is epic movement in markets on poloniex. They claim that is has to do with an increased server load and people flocking to the server. That is not the case. The lag is the same with 4k people as 23k people. I know enough about bandwidth and servers to understand that doesn't make sense.
The most recent scam that was colluded upon was XRP with POLO. Poloniex made it so that everyone got "transaction failed" after they opened their margin positions. This caused people to lose tens of thousands of dollars! I recognized what was happening, because I have seen this scam from Poloniex before, and I turned my position the other way with a manually placed order, and boom, just as I expected with the fraud lag, the market turns the other way and moves so much in 2 minutes in squeezes the shorts that are stuck. Perfect scam. Not to mention, they have verbiage in there Terms Of Service that you agree to waive your right to a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT! Yeah, they make you agree that you can't sue them for this fraud.
I just had a support ticket open with Poloniex for 12 days. I wanted to make a withdrawal but I had lost access to my email address that I had signed up with. It's actually their fault that I made 680$ dollars with 3.5$. If they would have helped me withdraw my 100$ I never would have been able to multiply it. Anyways, they handed me off from support guy to support guy claiming they didn't have the ability to help me and had to escalate me. After 12 days, I had to pay 15$ to my old email provider to activate the email address that I had lost. Then I was finally able to make my withdrawal after 12 days from POLONIEX.
Polo waits to add coins, because they get their hands on the coins before it's added to the exchange so they can manipulate the price when it is finally added. Poloniex gives priority to advanced coders and bots over regular trading people. Poloniex has their moderators just use key binds to pacify people complaining that they are not being helped by support.
I understand that someone can look at all these things and give "explanations" for them, but that's what makes this such a great scam site. They knew about the dao hack before it came. The site was primed for it. They watch the people deposit and withdraw all these coins after the site "crashes from so many customers!". They also claim DDOS attacks make this happen. Why is it that everytime something goes "wrong" on Poloniex they stand to make TONS OF MONEY! Pay attention, any time something goes wrong on Poloniex, they make tons of money!
Am I telling you that you shouldn't trade there? No that is not what I am saying. But I am suggesting that you be very careful. I would not deposit more money than you are willing to lose to a thief. Part of what has me so upset is the fact that Cryptsy stole money from me and I couldn't do anything about it. Cryptsy took my .6 BTC because of a "site glitch". I don't want others to lose BTC like me. I know many people are chasing dreams in crypto, we all want to be crypto millionairs. We can see that it is actually a legitimate possibility to become rich from crypto, but make no mistake, with few regulations around people will steal your coins in any way possible. Right now, Poloniex is the king of coin thiefs. I will still keep .1 - .2 btc there just for my own trading purposes, but I will no longer be an advocate for their site.
Be careful, keep your coins safe! Best of luck to everyone and their trading.