Will we keep using the cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex when we do not know how much money Poloniex has? Would we make more deposits if we could see the actual wallet balances for all the cryptocurrencies Poloniex makes available for trading?
Poloniex is currently one of the top altcoin exchanges by volume and appears to have the largest number of deposits in altcoins among any exchange. As potential or actual customers, do we not have the right to know how much money they actually have it all their digital currency wallets compared to how much they are liable for on withdrawals? With no official data, the best we can do is estimate. The estimates here based on what we can see are shocking in terms of how many USD worth of digital currency Poloniex probably has.
How much money does Poloniex actually have?
We start with looking at the volume, and then we compare that with what we can see on the cryptocurrencies which are easily transparent. On Poloniex in the last 24 hours there has been a total number of trades equaling 272 million dollars.
That means Poloniex actually is holding all of that in one form or another. Now, some of these are repeatedly traded, but as I'm going to show you this volume is a good estimator on how much Poloniex has because this is the amount of cryptocurrency in value of US dollars that has changed hands. In order for it to change hands, Poloniex has to have both sides of it.
Now yes, people can trade multiple times so we're going to account for that in the total value. In other words, 272 million has been traded. On the one side for example, a trade requires it to be on both sides. If I want to trade a Bitcoin for an Etherium, then Poloniex has to have the Bitcoin and the Ethereum in theory.
Now in practice whether they actually have it or not may be a little more interesting. Fortunately, we can actually see how much Poloniex has for one cryptocurrency in particular, which I think is the most undervalued and by far the best buy today. It is why I'm holding about $60,000 of it right now, which is my entire retirement portfolio, and my checking and savings account.
Poloniex has an account on Steem. This is one of the top currencies that's traded top 20 out of hundreds.
Poloniex has 24 million Steem.
They are sitting right now on $32 million of Steem alone if you look at their account value and count the Steem Backed Dollars.
Now, it's not obvious, you can look at the exact wallet Poloniex has, but they can also have multiple wallets. Long story short, let's look at the total volume on Poloniex. Let's just find the Steem volume. Even though they have $24 million of Steem, the actual amount of Steem transacted was only $728,000 in the last 24 hours.
Let's look at it from this point of view. I'm going to do different calculations to help us get an exact value using a couple of different methods.
First method
I'm going to add every single Steem market that is available on Poloniex. I'm adding the total up right now and we have the total number: 900,000 in Steem transactions. This is the volume in the last 24 hours on all the Steem markets.
Now we're going to divide that by the total amount of value in the Poloniex account. Therefore, the total amount of transactions, total amount of trading divided by the account value.
Now this is very easy to see that there's $32 million of Steem on Poloniex. Steem is right now not even in the top five currencies. It's actually 33 and they have $32 million of the 33rd traded currency.
Now, how much must they have in total?
We're going to calculate.
We'll then divide 900,000 by 32,590,433.42, which gives us approximately 3% of the volume to holding ratio.
Now, I've calculated beforehand using a different method and the number 3% is coming out significantly here.
What I've done, 32 million is how much we know they have in Steem. It's all sitting in one Steem account.
"Man if you got a hold of that you could have some fun!"
We've got the total amount here relative to Steem.
Now what we can do we've got this percentage: 2.7%.
This is the approximate percentage, but for Steem it's exact. This is the exact amount of Steem and Steem Dollars that Poloniex is actually holding compared to the total amount that was transacted.
We're going to divide 272,742,400 by 0.027, which gives us 10,101,570,370.
That's the number I was looking for $10 billion.
If the ratio of Steem is similar, Poloniex has about $10 billion.
Second method
Now you could do this a different way.
You could say the ratio of Steem is perhaps low. What I'm going to do is show you another way you could estimate it. You can estimate it also perhaps by these sell orders.
You can look at the Sell Orders and see right now that there's about 2.5 million Steem up.
Meanwhile, there's actually 10 times that much that's just being held on there.
In other words, if the Sell Orders are representative of the total balance, there's 10 times as much that people are holding and they're not even trying to sell.
What we could do in order to get some perspective is just to look at the Bitcoin and Ethereum market.
Let's look at the Ethereum/Bitcoin market. We can get a little estimate from here. What I just showed you on Steem, there was about 10 times as much as active on the sellers. Again, not exactly perfect, but we can get estimates that are pretty close this way.
Right now, there are current Sell Orders for 100 thousand Ethereum.
We could say with confidence, it's probably at least, at a bare minimum, a million Ethereum right now on Poloniex, absolute bare minimum.
I'm saying there's at least, using the Steem numbers and if you want to go conservative, 3 billion on Poloniex based on the actual numbers we've got here, though it's about 10 billion that's sitting on Poloniex.
If you do the same thing with Ethereum, and you say that there's 10 times the Ethereum, there are other Ethereum markets, but we're just going to keep this simple enough.
There's 1 million Ethereum times current Ethereum price, which is $250 today, and it equals to 256,750,00.
That means just in Ethereum alone, there's likely to be at least $256 million in Ethereum, but that doesn't accurately capture all these other Ethereum markets. That's just calculated through the Bitcoin/Ethereum market.
Very easily, if you consider the value of everything else, it gets up there. Just on this, there's a whole bunch of Bitcoin buy orders as well. There's very easily at least a quarter of a billion in Ethereum alone. You'd have to think that there's at least a billion or so in Bitcoin, and then there are so many coins on Poloniex.
You've got to think, if you look over and see that in one of the smaller currencies relative to the big ones, there are 32 million dollars of Steem just sitting on Poloniex. You'd have to think something like Ethereum at a bare minimum, there'd be 10 or maybe 20 times that much Ethereum, and maybe a 100 times that much Bitcoin.
Therefore, I suggest there is anywhere between at a bare minimum a billion dollars on Poloniex, I would say the closest estimate would be around 10 billion dollars of cryptocurrencies on Poloniex, with a high end maybe being depending on the price when you see this, 20 plus billion dollars on Poloniex.
What does this mean?
When we've got this much money all put in one place like this, in my opinion this signals a risky situation. There are two simple tips you can use that you can follow out of this. Knowing how much money is on Poloniex.
"I don't know if I know, Jerry, based on the numbers you gave."
There's anywhere between 1 billion at the low-end and 20 billion at the high-end, probably about 10 billion dollars on Poloniex.
Knowing this, that makes one of the number one hacking targets in the world, a very good hacking target. All you have to do is find one way and clean out a little bit.
At the same time, it also makes a very big target for things to go wrong. When I put my deposit, I so far have not had any issue with Poloniex other than delays. So far, my account has functioned smoothly. I will sell the rest of my Ethereum into Steem and make a withdrawal.
There are two basic strategies knowing this.
The one basic strategy is to at least put some of your money, withdraw some of it, and put it on another exchange. My favorite exchange right now is Bittrex because it works fast. The withdrawals are light speed.
I can put Ethereum on Bittrex and have it in my Steem account. I can run it through Bittrex from Ethereum to Steem and have it all done in 20 or 30 minutes. Complete change and withdrawal, Bittrex is incredibly fast. I suggest if you've got a bunch on Poloniex, split it up, especially if you've never made a withdrawal.
Try making withdrawals to see if it works. At a bare minimum place your bets, put at least half on Bittrex or somewhere else. Take out as much as you can and get it in other places. A 10 billion dollar target is likely to get taken down at some point. Especially because it's already overwhelmed. Poloniex is already barely able to handle all the things they've got.
I've seen story after story of users losing their money, accounts frozen, accounts hacked, no customer support. I love Poloniex, but I'm saying this because they probably need a lower transaction volume so that they can have more room to breathe.
Therefore, I suggest, and this is what I'm doing, I've taken my money, I have had as much as 5 or 10 Bitcoin at once on Poloniex, I've taken almost all of it off and I will be withdrawing the very last of it today.
All in my Steem wallet
If you have a whole bunch, it's easy to hold it in Bittrex as another exchange, but where I'm actually putting mine is in my Steem wallet. The majority of all of my money, I'm holding for all my cryptocurrencies, is in my Steem wallet. You can see for yourself that I'm holding almost all the cryptocurrency I have in my Steem wallet.
Why?
Because I actually earn interest just leaving this in here and I can power it down and withdraw it steadily.
It takes a week to get out 1/13th of it, so it's kind of vested in here, but it earns interests constantly.
Look, if I refresh the page, watch this. It was 756 and now it is 757. I just earned Steem while doing this post, about a tenth of a cent.
I hold my Steem here now. I used to have it in a lot of different places.
I recommend holding your cryptocurrency in a wallet that's made for it. Steem has the best wallet set-up I've seen because it's also an account you can actually vote. There are so many things you can do with it.
However, there are lots of other wallets out there that have features, and for some of them, the more you have activate more powerful features. Like on some of the currencies if you have a certain amount, you can set up a feature that will pay you out. I think it's a Super Node in new economy movement. Some currencies will give you the same thing as Steem.
Just holding it on an exchange is pretty much the riskiest scenario, and there's no shame in that. I held my money on Poloniex for months in 2016. Now, I've pulled it out so that if something happens to Poloniex, I'm not completely wiped out.
This allows me to just have it in my immediate control. The problem is, if I've got something on Poloniex and I want to withdraw it, then I have to go through Poloniex's withdrawal process, and that can take several hours or several days.
Some users I've seen have even got all their money tied up and stuck. As much as I just read someone's $70,000 ended up in their account, I would imagine there's a lot higher amounts. The problem is, when things like this happen, people are often too ashamed to even talk about it.
Imagine losing $100,000 because your withdrawal didn't go through properly. Would you want to tell anyone about that or would you keep that a secret?
You know what?
I'm not just going to tell anyone because I'll look real stupid. There's probably a ton of times that this has happened.
Then if anything happens on the exchange itself, then you're looking at losing all of it. So what I recommend is have it at least on multiple exchanges in a minimum, and preferably hold it in wallets that actually you have access to.
Now, Poloniex has their Steem in a wallet. Poloniex is just holding this cryptocurrency in their own wallet. Here's another thing with Steem in particular, and any currency where it's necessary to hold it liquid, Poloniex can't keep their Steem in a way that it couldn't and many of the other cryptocurrencies fall in this category. Their ability to withdraw it and transact it also means that it's readily available to be taken out of their wallet.
On Steem the permissions are set up in such a way that if the exact same technology that's needed to go send Steem when I make a withdrawal, all you need to do is essentially get the same key and you could clean out all the Steem at once, and there are lots of other wallets that have this same property for many of the altcoins, and then any big wallet could easily be cleaned out at once.
In fact, if this already happened would Poloniex have said anything about it?
If they already did lose an entire altcoin wallet or if they lost a significant part of a Bitcoin or Ethereum wallet, would they say anything?
If they said anything everyone would pull their money out immediately. Therefore from their business point of view the safest thing to do if they did actually lose, if they had a little catastrophe, but not big enough to wipe it out. The safest thing to do would be to not say anything. I have no idea about what has or has not happened, these are logical things, therefore I'm pulling all of my money off Poloniex today and I am putting it in my Steem wallet.
If I want to buy more I will be using Bittrex until such time that I see a lot of stories about "Poloniex restored my withdrawal. Poloniex is working faster now. Poloniex is solvent" and Poloniex actually shares this information that I had to estimate.
I would trust Poloniex a 100% if they showed exactly how much they had in all their wallets and said, "Look here's how much Bitcoin we have. Here's how much Ethereum we have." You can see thankfully how much Steem they have because it's sitting there, what about all these other wallets?
If you found this helpful would you please upvote this if it's on Steem or leave a like if it's on YouTube, because that's how I know that this was worth my time, to make you something that I hope was useful for you, that I hope has the chance to save you a lot of money in the event of something bad happening, like a crash or panic.
I hope this has given you notice, you might if you've got money on Poloniex, pull it out while they're honoring withdrawals.
This is just a perfect situation for the most epic disaster we've ever seen in the cryptocurrency world. Having 10 billion dollars all in a relatively small amount of wallets, that hackers all over the world are probably trying to get into right now.
One of them will or maybe already has succeeded. At some point there will be some huge disaster, that's almost certain. Not just on Poloniex, but perhaps on a different exchange as well.
I love you, you're awesome.
I hope you have a wonderful day today.
Thank you for making it to the end of this post.
Final words
Thank you very much for reading this post which was originally filmed as the video below!
Would you join me today, by leaving a like on this video or upvote this post on Steemit?
The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk
According to coin cap there are 239,154,478 steem in circulation, so Poloniex have 24,000,000 or so steem meaning they own about 10% of all Steem. Just a thought @jerrybanfield but how about a post tracking where most of Steem is held or used?
Oh that steem in poloniex is held by polonix users! They can still buy and sel steem on poloniex they just cant deposit or wiothdrawl!
its not "stuck" the poloniex users are free to buy or sell that steem ofr BTC or ETH ....whats cool is that people ARENT selling it because its up 24% on poloniex! meaning people on poloniex are rushing to buy steem! ALL that money in poloniex can at ANYTIME be POURED into steem/SBD!!!!
Great post Jerry and you bring up some very relevant points. As crypto goes more mainstream these exchanges are just getting swamped. Anytime there's massive volatility one or more exchanges will literally "pull the plug" for awhile to catch up. Not a good look. Could you imagine if this would happen on Wall Street. People would pull their money out so fast the whole system would collapse.
My biggest concern and a question I can't seem to find an answer for is this, why are Polo and the other exchanges disabling Steem withdrawals? This is deeply concerning and I'd really like to know why. Is it an exchange issue? Is there something that needs fixed on Steemit Inc? This is a question we really need to find the answer to. Just this week we've had issues with Polo, Bittrex, Shapeshift, and Changelly regarding Steem, so there's a lot of smoke, we need to put it out before it becomes a fire.
Could not agree more....
Not sure what is happening but steem seems to be an incredible price for investers right now...
nice post Jerry like always.
Great post jerry.
Is there a witnes that are trying to get STEEM on an other exchange like Bter, Kraken and Bitfinex?
It will help with the deposit and trust in STEEM.
Change bitcoin to any Altcoins Instantly ! It is a cryptocurrency exchange with the most favorable rates and the fairest terms. Your exchange has never been so smooth. https://changelly.com?ref_id=44c1f9794b98
I can't wait to get to whale like u jerry, but aint easy. Pls upvote me so that i could smile today( all whales here)
Really awesome post Jerry , you are always my favorite !!
Did you know that there are services that can borrow crypto at any time from Poloniex? These are secret deals from companies such as ShapeShift. Disclosure: I absolutely love and respect ShapeShift. Who couldn't? :)
I like shapeshift
ah. . . polo and the trollbox, you never know the good times till its over
another amazing blog @jerrybanfield as always full of information. Reading and watching you is like a treasure of wisdom. I am glad if you will become the next president.
Thats some crazy time warp thing you got going on.
Interesting! Decentralized exchanges are the future! It might take a disaster at Poloniex to make people realize this...
There's been a lot of FUD with Poloniex. We need Decentralized exchanges that rival Polo's liquidity.
Use Bittrex mate!
Oh yes I do! In fact I might as well withdraw some of them there. I want to know more about Bitshares and if maybe they can be better than Polo and Bittrex someday
I tried researching Bitshares but have yet to commit to making an investment. I mean not thousands but just a couple of bucks perhaps Lol!
By the time dex will popular on crypto trader, maybe someday
We have front row tickets to see it when it happens bro.
omg, it's big amount
Dude, you´re a content machine! :)
This was a really interesting read. Thanks a bunch!
Apparently not enough since they keep saying wallets have issues and block chains have issues when really they don't...In my honest opinion this exchange has become worse and worse over the last few months.
I think he is saying you should take your crypto off the exchanges?
Poloniex is really big exchange, but I think it's not the best choice. They have a Iot to improve. I definitely prefer Bittrex, it works much better.
One day POLO will be overtaken! Polo is losing customers by the day, the service is sh!t compared to other exchanges! Bittrex all the way for me I say!
Just a matter of time my friend :)
I agree and they have a small amount of my bitcoins and have never closed my support ticket and re-sent them
Bollox to them. robbing Bas**ds.
Yeah, many people dissapointed about their service including me
I don't use Poloniex and NEVER have!
Thirds Rule Strategy
Thank me later...
I am treating my Crypto purchases with Security in mind. I also am not purchasing any more than I can afford to lose. That being said@jerrybanfield it is good to talk about this subject. It reminds me of the atmosphere at an AA Meeting. If you have something to say Speak Up and share it with the group. We are are all Friends here that are trying to convey how we feel and keep it in the LIGHT !! Love you my Brother................Always One Day at a Time.
I did a very DMA transaction a week ago and went through then I did a $500 transaction and it's still waiting for 2 weeks 😡😂
Poloniex customer support won't replay for weeks, it's a same poloniex is like this, bittrex is the best to use right now 😀
"I would trust Poloniex a 100% if they showed exactly how much they had in all their wallets and said, "Look here's how much Bitcoin we have. Here's how much Ethereum we have." Haha, Good point Jerry!
Great analysis... Makes me wish I created Poloniex haha. Hope you have a great weekend Jerry!
they are the ones supplying the shovels to the gold mine!
I absolutely agree with knowing what Poloniex's market cap is the same way we know what the Market Cap of say the NYSE is at any given time - for example we know that 1 trillion dollars evaporated from global equity markets just this week.
We should be able to determine market cap for all of the exchanges and this would give individuals a clearer picture of their 'broker'. Alas the market is unregulated and they are not compelled to display this for us.
I enjoyed your post, its a very important point. I tend to gravitate towards the exchanges where there is the most volume and therefore liquidity.
Conversely, the difference between Polo/Kraken and bittrex is that they carry fewer coins, likely risk management. So my real question which exchange is exposed to greater risk from the failure of a coin.
Thanks Jerry!
well written post, well done, i am not happy with poloniex at the moment to be honest :)
I can't express how much I appreciate your efforts. It's great to have someone as special as you to work with!Nive ability to write such a long long post about cryptocurrency.:)
I work on poetry have alook hope you like 💐
I hope poloniex is now safe for trading
Great post Jerry! Personally I stopped using Poloniex quite some time ago, but it's unfortunate b/c I adore their trading platform and ease of use. These are some valid points and considerations for those that continue to wish using it. I would add: read the new terms of service very carefully!
why are you posting at 100% rewards i thought you were the first who complained about upvoting yourself... and that is best to post at 50/50 to help the community too... i have no complains about any of that... BUT I HATE PEOPLE WHO SAY THIS is not right and they go and do it... so its like they tell others dont do it but themselves they do it... so much support for the steemit community you are all here to make money you care less about the community lets be honest!!! keep it real.. i hate fake people...
Great Post Jerry, Time for me to move some coin from Poloniex.
I've read it once, need to read it again to absorb your method. This is worth many times of read and contemplation.
Since i dissapointed about poloniex service,
I decide to exchange crypto directly via DEX & I stop wasting my time for trading on it
Great stuff Jerry. You have done an awesome analysis. hope steem will going to be on bitfinex very soon
Poloniex was a nice exchange to me until a withdrawal didn't process. It's now been TWO MONTHS after created the support ticket and still no reply. They are probably gone soon.
omg
i hope they don't stole our money
Imagine getting an upvote from Poloniex lol :D
Mmany accounts are blocking in poloniex what's the reason? anyone know i will you sugges generally there is common issue of IP dont change your IP with poloniex and also verify you account.
i think steem is going to be on bitfinex very soon
You still out here trying to sell Steem? Damnn
great jerry
I wouldn't touch Polo with a 10 inch pole. Stay away like it's the plague!
Good work on this post Jerry. Keep up this amazing energy on Steemit:)
very good
it.s amazing
please vote
Great stuff Jerry. I stopped using Poloniex. Too many fishy things going on with them.
Poloniex is a mysterious exchange. Maybe they were robbed, and maybe not. They never communicated with their customers.
Oh ,amazing
Not heard of Poloniex till this, thanks.
You love Poloniex? Did you read their new terms and conditions?
Anyway, great post for the rest. Always keep the main bulk of your funds in a dedicated safe wallet. That's good advice. Exchanges will always be focal points of hacking attempts.
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Thanks for another nice blog @jerrybanfield I always read your post because its real and interesting. In my opinion the rate of steem will also increase in the coming few days as because most people now are getting interest to invest on this cryptocurrency as we see the rate of bitcoin passes the $3000 mark in the past few days. The current rate of steem is now above $1 but gradually it will increase in the coming days lets hope for the best.
Nice one @Jerry banfield I have always been interested in your post because of the good information I always receiving from it keep up the good work