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Farewell Poloniex, it's been a long way down....

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@bengy
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4 min read

Poloniex used to be one of the major exchanges in the Cryptocurrency space... and for quite some time, it was my go to exchange. It was also one of the first places to list ATOM and to begin a soft staking service... (and also to implement a dark theme!).

However, several years make a big difference in this space... the rise of giants like Kucoin and Binance have left Poloniex in the dust. Low Volumes made for a very unfavourable trading environment where the price of a crypto asset could be quite vulnerable to slippage... and there were large gaps between the best bids and offers.

I have very few things left there on Poloniex... however, the major thing that was left there was ATOM (Cosmos) due to the fact that soft staking was supported and also because it was the first exchange to list the cross-chain solution. So, out of inertia (and lack of a reliable hardware solution on Ledger).. even when Kucoin listed ATOM and a staking service, I had just left it there.

Today, I wanted to move the ATOMs to a new staking pool service from Kucoin called Pool-X... actually, technically it is a Kucoin incubated project but the linkage is pretty damn close! So this mean that I needed to withdraw the ATOMs from Poloniex... withdrawals to the Kucoin address required a MEMO, as it uses a shared deposit address.

However, on attempting to withdraw ATOMs from Poloniex... I found that there was NO field for a MEMO! I reached out to support... only to receive this reply!

Thanks for reaching out!

We do not require a MEMO to withdraw ATOM. If the receiving wallet requires a memo note, I would suggest to you that you use an intermediary wallet to send your ATOM to then you can send it on to your wallet/exchange.

Hope this information finds you well.

Okay... this is not really acceptable. ATOM has had it's mainnet out for quite some time now... and MEMOs are a integral part of it's structure and technology. If you don't support it as an exchange, it is a pretty poor backend that you have. Plus, it gives the impression that you are trying make the withdrawals more difficult than it needs to be... this is what is known as a dark pattern in User Interface.

I didn't want to install a 3rd party wallet to bounce the ATOMs to Kucoin... that is just annoying and requires a touch more research than I had time for... after all, you don't just want to install programs and extensions left right and centre without much scrutiny because you are in a hurry!

So, I did the next best thing.... dumped the ATOMs at market price (first checking to see if there was an order that could handle the slippage) to USDT... shunted the USDT to Kucoin via the TRON version of USDT (lowest fees and fast).... and immediately bought up ATOMs on the Kucoin ATOM/USDT pairing. All in all, done in 5-10 minutes... with a loss of around 0.1% as I placed immediate market orders rather than risking limit orders. It's an acceptable loss... but it shouldn't have been required to work around like this...

Poloniex... this wasn't neccesary. It really shows how far behind your platform is compared to Kucoin and Binance.. time for me to clean up and clear out!

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