The Rise and Fall of Poloniex: From Exchange Leader to Petty Threats

Poloniex was once the most liquid cryptocurrency exchange in the world, boasting daily volumes upwards of $400 million at one point. However, from poor customer service resulting in faltering exchange activity to being spun off by Circle, the exchange has dropped off the charts in a rather haphazard manner, December 5, 2019.

Fall From Grace Symptomatic of Management Woes

If you’ve seen the Poloniex Twitter handle off late, you already know what this is going to be about. Going from being the most respected and liquid exchange in the space to delisting coins for petty, personal reasons, the story of Poloniex has quickly evolved from serendipity to tragedy.

We don't own any US customers' data as all of them are preserved by Circle. BTW, after careful review, we decided #DigiByte is not qualified for our listing standard. We will delist $DGB soon. Details to be announced. — Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) December 5, 2019

Today, the exchange announced they are delisting Digibyte (DGB) “after a careful review revealed it is not qualified for their listing standards”. In reality, the exchange, which recently tweeted “let’s buy TRON”, was expressing their anger toward Digibyte’s founder who wrote a Twitter thread calling TRON centralized and fraudulent.

Poloniex deleted after 28 minutes pic.twitter.com/OJrsspkqmU — Crypto_Deleted_Tweets (@CryptoDeleted) December 1, 2019

Never before has an exchange resorted to such petty measures, but it comes as no surprise that Justin Sun and his ilk are unable to muster an ounce of professionalism. TRON’s merits and demerits can stand on their own two feet, but to deny that Justin Sun is a bad actor in this space is to ignore the things that are symptomatically holding this industry back.

From a falsifying a partnership with Liverpool FC, to a fake Tesla giveaway, and finally his blatant lies regarding the reason he could not make lunch with Warren Buffet – an event he paid $4.5 million for – Justin Sun has now outdone himself by buying one of the most reputed exchanges and turning it into an entity that fights his petty fights for him.

Teaming Up to Threaten Journalists

Poloniex aside, Justin Sun recently donated money to a TRON community member to harass employees of The Block for reporting about an alleged raid at a Binance Shanghai office. CZ, CEO of Binance, denies that they had an office in the region for the last 2 years and calls the article a fabrication.

Two of the wealthiest men in cryptocurrency plan to raise a "FUD fighting fund" worth more than $1 million, presumably to wield as an implicit threat against journalists who report facts that run contrary to their business interests. pic.twitter.com/wv8LMOlziq — Mike Dudas (@mdudas) November 22, 2019

This may be true, but the tactics the duo of Sun and CZ have resorted to in the aftermath display an evident lack of professionalism. Moreover, CZ wants to sue The Block for the story, and the reason he cites is the drop in BNB price.

Fun fact: since The Block‘s article, BNB is down 5.7 percent; from BNB’s high till the date of the article, BNB was down 62.3 percent in USD terms.