Poloniex Maintenance Freeze Fuels Crypto Pessimism
Poloniex, one of the most active exchanges, further wrecked the moods on the crypto markets after a recently announced planned maintenance took longer than expected.
"We’ll be doing scheduled wallet maintenance today at ~12:30pm EST. During this time deposits and withdrawals may be impacted for some currencies but should be running again shortly after that!" — Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) March 8, 2018
We’ll be doing scheduled wallet maintenance today at ~12:30pm EST. During this time deposits and withdrawals may be impacted for some currencies but should be running again shortly after that!
Just like the recent Binance maintenance, the case of Poloniex once again triggered rumors of a potential hack, underlining the fact that exchanges remain one of the most vulnerable spots on the crypto market.
Yet even before the maintenance, Poloniex saw withdrawal issues. And a few days ago, the exchange warned of phishing attempts to steal credentials via a faked app:
"We've been made aware of false reports coming from the creator of an impostor Poloniex app that the Poloniex platform has been compromised. Please note, the Poloniex platform has NOT been compromised and there is NOT a Poloniex app."
At the moment, Poloniex has seen its weight on the markets dwindle as new exchanges handle the high volumes for new arrival altcoins. The Poloniex marketplace is also one of the more active USDT trading platforms, where Tether prices are affecting overall performance.
Poloniex still handles more than $184 million in trading, or around 21,000 BTC in a day, making up a significant portion of worldwide trading. Poloniex remains a staple exchange for some digital assets not yet traded elsewhere. At the moment, the exchange lists 99 coins and tokens, but most are seeing only very thin volumes.
It is unknown whether the maintenance is in any way related to the recent purchase of Poloniex by the Circle fintech startup.
Poloniex has seen previous suspicious trading bot activity, and has frozen trading. This is the issue that recently affected Binance, making orders from selected accounts. Binance rolled back the trades, but the rumors of another potential hack added to the negative mood on the markets.
"This$VIAmarket buy is the biggest Ive seen. 100x in a 1 min candle. Strange that @binance_2017 is not freezing the markets right now like Poloniex that freezed lots of markets when fishy market buys happened over there due to hacked Bots." — Anondran ⚡️🔥🚀 (@anondran) March 7, 2018
Rumors of hacked exchanges abound, and actual news of losses are also happening more often, with the most significant ones in the past month being Coincheck and BitGrail.