Poloniex, the exchange that has been bought by the Goldman Sachs backed Circle, has just sent out a round of emails stating new policy changes. Popular Twitter user and crypto figure ‘Whalepanda’ has posted the original notice on the social media platform, which explains that Poloniex will require all legacy account holders to verify through the new verification portal or they will stay frozen. The deadline is 14 days from the date of the email:

Looks like @Poloniex is finally forcing existing accounts to go through their verification process. pic.twitter.com/zKgD09xtQF — WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) May 27, 2018

The new policy changes have been awaited for sometime now as Circle has to comply with US regulations and Poloniex has been also located in the same country even before being acquired by them. The legacy accounts previously could operate with only the most basic verification data and didn’t include the need for ID and personal document authentication.

The problem is with how the changes have been rolled out as summed up in a Reddit post that just popped up on r/BitcoinMarkets. User ‘domchi’ pointed out that there was a statement issued back in December 2017 by Poloniex that stated that legacy account holders will get notified by the exact timeline and deadline of the policy changes during Q1 2018 and will also be able to do daily withdrawals of $2000 until the deadline.

Some users in the thread state that they never got an additional email with the final deadline and now the withdrawals are closed meaning that the only way they can comply is to verify their accounts through submitting personal documents.

A comment from the Mike-Poloniex account even previously stated that “No one will be forced to verify or abandon funds.”

It seems like the legacy account holders who missed the original post from last December or the users who simply waited for the official emails have come to a dead end now and are left with only one choice. Then again this is something that should have came as obvious as US based exchanges are always strict with their verification policies considering there are strict AML/KYC regulations in place.