Poloniex combines a massive number of cryptocurrencies with some of the lowest trading fees of any exchange. It also offers crypto futures trading for those who want to hedge or add leverage to their investments. Unfortunately, U.S. citizens and residents can’t use this exchange, but it’s a viable option for citizens of other countries. Read this Poloniex review to learn more.
How Poloniex works
Poloniex is designed for cryptocurrency trading. It offers hundreds of trading pairs in its spot trading platform. In addition, Poloniex gives you access to crypto futures contracts.
This exchange isn’t set up for buying and selling crypto. It only lets you buy and sell a small number of the cryptocurrencies it offers through a payment processing partner, Simplex. You can pay using a debit card, credit card, or Simplex bank account. Fees are on the high side, though.
Top perks
Large cryptocurrency selection
With over 200 cryptocurrencies available, Poloniex has one of the deepest rosters among the major exchanges. You’ll be able to find just about all types of cryptocurrencies on this exchange, from market leaders like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to smaller altcoins that haven’t gotten so popular yet.
Low trading fees
Trading fees on Poloniex are some of the best in the business, which is an important consideration when you invest in cryptocurrency. The highest amount you’ll pay for a trade is 0.1550%.
You can get a 30% discount on trading fees if you pay them in TRON (TRX), as the team behind that cryptocurrency is partnered with Poloniex. It’s also possible to get lower trading fees if you have at least $49 worth of TRON in your account, or if you trade more than $50,000 per 30-day period.
Highly-rated mobile app
Crypto exchange apps can be hit or miss. Fortunately, Poloniex has a quality mobile app with high ratings in both the App Store and Google Play. The app has most of the same features as the web platform and is a convenient way to trade crypto on your phone or tablet.
Futures trading
This exchange offers futures trading with up to 100-times leverage on Poloniex Futures. Note that it isn’t available to residents of some regions, which are listed in Poloniex’s user agreement and its FAQs.
A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price in the future. Futures trading is extremely risky, and it’s not recommended unless you’re an advanced trader.
What could be improved
Buying and selling fees
While Poloniex has cheap trading fees, its fees for buying and selling crypto are more expensive. It partners with Simplex, a payment processor, for these transactions.
If you buy crypto using a Simplex bank account, both Simplex and Poloniex take a 0.5% fee, so you pay 1% total. Considering many of the major exchanges let you deposit and withdraw money from a bank account free of charge, this is a notable disadvantage of Poloniex.
You can also pay with a credit or debit card. Simplex charges a fee of 3.5% to 5% for this, with a $10 minimum, and Poloniex also charges its own 0.75% fee.
Unavailable in the United States
Poloniex’s user agreement prohibits U.S. citizens and residents from using it. The exchange was previously open to U.S. customers, but it had regulatory issues and shut down operations there in 2019. In 2021, it agreed to pay more than $10 million to settle a lawsuit with the SEC alleging that Poloniex operated an unregistered digital asset exchange.
Alternatives to consider
If you’re looking for an excellent U.S. crypto exchange: Gemini is committed to following all government regulations and is licensed to operate in the U.S.. It’s also one of the best exchanges no matter your experience level, as it has both beginner-friendly and advanced trading platforms.
If you want a wide variety of advanced options: Binance is one of the most feature-packed crypto exchanges. In addition to standard crypto trading, it offers margin trading, futures, leveraged tokens, and yield farming where you can earn crypto rewards.
Cryptocurrency selection
Poloniex has an extremely large selection of well over 200 cryptocurrencies. There aren’t any big gaps in its lineup, as it has just about all the biggest cryptocurrencies and plenty of altcoins.
You can only buy a small fraction of these cryptocurrencies using cash. The majority of what Poloniex has is trading pairs, meaning you trade one cryptocurrency for another.
That means to get access to most of Poloniex’s lineup, you need to buy another cryptocurrency first, such as Tether (USDT) or USD Coin (USDC). After that, you can trade for anything Poloniex offers.
Is your cryptocurrency safe with Poloniex?
Poloniex doesn’t have a perfect track record in terms of security, although it seems to have improved over the years. Its most notable security breach was in March 2014, when hackers stole 97 Bitcoin, which was 12.3% of the exchange’s supply. In response, Poloniex temporarily reduced all customer balances by 12.3% and increased trade fees to raise money. It repaid customers the entire amount by July of that year.
In 2019, a list of alleged account emails and passwords at Poloniex was posted on Twitter. According to a Poloniex representative, only 5.5% of the email addresses on the list were associated with accounts at the exchange. These users were required to reset their passwords.
It also bears mentioning that Poloniex doesn’t have a dedicated security page on its website. The site doesn’t provide information about how much of its customers’ funds are kept offline in cold storage, or if it has any type of crypto insurance. Other exchanges are much more open about their security. Considering Poloniex has been hacked before, it would be nice if it had more security information available.
