Is Anyone Else Concerned About Poloniex?

[Qatrikias]

So, what's the deal with Poloniex? The great majority of the volume of all lower-cap coins is traded there. Until the explosion of the XRP in the Korean market, virtually all XRP was traded there. Even now somewhere north of 25% of all XRP is still traded there.

They were based in Montana (no actual office), then last year moved to Delaware (no actual office). Both states are famous as US state income tax shelters for LLCs and INCs. Which is no big deal. Except whenever it comes up no better information about who is running this thing or where they're based comes out.

Witness this reddit exchange from a few months ago.

Which leaves me wondering if the next big crypto crash won't result from a miners v. users bitcoin battle, but rather something calamitous over at a Polo. 

Anyone with thoughts or who might have a little more info on the exchange?

[Guest]

It's just one of those conspiracy but all companies gotta start out somewhere, and this is a new playing field. 

[SimpleLife]

Polo was "DDOSed" every time XRP started to take off in the last 5 months.  The more XRP is traded on other exchanges, and in something other than Bitcoin, the better.

[xrpaware]

Poloniex being incorporated in the state of Delaware is no big deal. It's a pretty common occurrence for companies -- Both US based and foreign subsidiaries. That in and of itself is not a big deal (GE, GM, Ford, various banks, Major Oil companies, etc.) as major US companies incorporate in Delaware because their incorporation laws are the most friendly to the corporation versus being friendly to stockholders or customers.

[tylerdurdenn]

The recent stellar fiasco is cause for concern

[Qatrikias]

31 minutes ago, xrpaware said:

Poloniex being incorporated in the state of Delaware is no big deal. It's a pretty common occurrence for companies -- Both US based and foreign subsidiaries. That in and of itself is not a big deal (GE, GM, Ford, various banks, Major Oil companies, etc.) as major US companies incorporate in Delaware because their incorporation laws are the most friendly to the corporation versus being friendly to stockholders or customers.

That's exactly what I meant when I said it was "no big deal" -- it's the fact that no one seems to actually know much about who it is and where they are that seems like a big deal...

[Qatrikias]

@tylerdurdenn I kept hearing about that, but didn't look into it. What's was the fiasco about? All I saw was their official response that they never were participating in the lumens give away, and don't know why they were listed on the Stellar site...

[natethesnake]

While Poloniex is dodgy enough, it's risky to rely too much on the Korean exchanges too. If Kim Jong Un goes ballistic and shoots his missiles at South Korea, it'll be devastating on all cryptos.

I've long since moved to Kraken.

[Qatrikias]

@natethesnake -- I think everyone wants a broad, distributed XRP trade, but I'm seriously trying to answer the question here of why people don't seem really alarmed by Polo.

Any exchange can go belly up, but an exchange steeped in mystery would be the last place I'd park a coin.

Trouble is, with so much of the world apparently not seeing things the same way, the entire crypto market is at risk.

Maybe I'm asking an unanswerable question-- something like "why are people stupid?" I guess I hoped someone would tell me I was seeing Polo all wrong.

[natethesnake]

3 minutes ago, Qatrikias said:

@natethesnake -- I think everyone wants a broad, distributed XRP trade, but I'm seriously trying to answer the question here of why people don't seem really alarmed by Polo.

Any exchange can go belly up, but an exchange steeped in mystery would be the last place I'd park a coin.

Trouble is, with so much of the world apparently not seeing things the same way, the entire crypto market is at risk.

Maybe I'm asking an unanswerable question-- something like "why are people stupid?" I guess I hoped someone would tell me I was seeing Polo all wrong.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I certainly grew tired of Polo's trollbox and frequent network failures. 

[Qatrikias]

After a good bit of digging, I found this -- a post from 3 months ago from a guy who convincingly claims to be Poloniex's CXO. On twitter @ https://twitter.com/MickD

Quote

Thank you for the feedback, I completely understand where you're coming from and am working to break that perception.

It's honestly not a case that we're hiding anything. Our success at the top of 2016 took us by surprise and we spent all year with our heads down expanding our infrastructure and dev ops. Unfortunately the result was that marketing communications took a back seat.

I'm now just starting to get some breathing room and am building materials that (hopefully) can shed some light on who we are and how Poloniex operates.

What I can tell you in the meantime, if it helps.

I'm the CXO (Chief Experience Officer). You can find my personal profile here @MickD

We are a 30+ person company and growing rapidly

On top of the 30 we have an incredible legal team (10 deep) that is very on top of the regulatory landscape

We're actively, but quietly, working behind the scenes to help craft decent, sensible, regulations that benefit the entire cryptocurrency community - not just Poloniex. Sometimes publically, but more often anonymously

The company is registered in Delaware but our corporate office is just outside of Boston

Hope this helps.

-Mike

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/60hvgx/the_best_exchange/df6ylff/

Edited June 28, 2017 by Qatrikias

[cmbartley]

2 hours ago, tylerdurdenn said:

The recent stellar fiasco is cause for concern

likely Stellar's error.

[Guest]

Maybe a little bit off-topic:

I am curious about the influence of the 3 major Ripple exchanges (Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit). It seems that Korea is now the leader in XRP trading, they have the biggest volume. What concerns me a bit, is that they also have huge volume on the ETH/KRW market. I think Ethereum is in a bubble right now, because all the new ICOs taking ETH as payment and if they will cash out, the ETH market will collapse. What happens if the ETH bubble bursts? Will it have a direct influence on the XRP price, because the major XRP/KRW markets are on the same Korean exchanges? Or will it have an opposite effect and people will flee into XRP with their KRW?

Edited June 28, 2017 by Guest

[Wilbur14]

13 hours ago, vsyc said:

I moved away from Polo, trust Kraken more.

This  X 1000000

[Guest]

Defiantly concerned, I do not hold any funds in Poloniex and have no intentions to in the future (hard wallets all the way and some funds for active trading stored on exchanges I consider to be transparent and trustworthy i.e Kraken).

Have spent some time trying to find more information on who is behind, the size of the team ect, have not really found any resources that are satisfactory considering the transaction volume polo covers. There was a recent post that this information will be more visible in the future, hopefully, this is the case and things do not look that bad under the covers.

I believe in one of the Reddit posts Mike stated the company has about 50 employees in addition to a 10 person legal team. Considering they have daily volume > 400mil this appears very under-resourced (putting into perspective the company I work for although a different industry has trade volume > 1b annually and we are still 500+).

Can only hope this is not Mt.Gox 2.0

Will leave this here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristandagosta/