Bitcoin Forum

It's been 5 months since Poloniex stole millions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5151636.0) from its customers. That was a big step on the way of its downfall, and the Poloniex team has just moved even further to the end of the cliff.

Poloniex was famously headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, which is a good place to do business, with serious regulations, it has moved to the Seychelles islands.

Of all offshore centers, the Seychelles are probably the worst. Sure, it's one of the easiest. Anyone can create a company or open a bank account there, and make big deposits with no question asked, but it's impossible to get the money back afterwards. If you're a freelance programmer working in Europe, nobody will give you any kind of work if you want payments made to a bank in the Seychelles. Also, if you have money in the Seychelles and you want to buy property in Europe, it won't work either. Money coming from the Seychelles is seen as money coming from drug dealers or the like. The Seychelles are known worldwide as a money laundering place. If you want to stay clean, there's only one thing to do: avoid doing any business or investment there. So, avoid Poloniex...

Not wanting to be all negative, the Seychelles is probably a good place for a vacation.

Interesting.  As my knowledge of geography is really bad, I don't even know where the Seychelles islands are.  I'll have to look it up, but I don't doubt what you wrote about them being a haven for offshore businesses that want to bend the rules and avoid regulation.  The new owners of poloniex haven't exactly done themselves a favor in the credibility department with this move.

Anyway, I stopped using them well before they ditched their U.S. customer base.  I recall reading that their trading volume had dropped off a cliff in the past couple of years, whereas they used to be one of the best exchanges out there.  I have serious doubts about their ability to survive long term after this, and if they go bust it couldn't have happened to a more worthy exchange.  Screw them.

I'm not favoring the Poloniex and I too have left using it but ditching US customer was not the choice of Poloniex but was to prevent it from clashing with US authorities and I believe moving to Seychelles too was done to save the business. US is being one of the most restricted market for crypto. They wouldn't afford to keep their HQ in an unstable country in terms of crypto regulations.

weird, didn't they just move to bermuda 4 months ago? https://www.coindesk.com/circle-moves-non-us-poloniex-customers-to-new-bermuda-entity

i guess their new asian investor overlords prefer the seychelles? bitmex is registered there, so i assume they are pretty hands off in terms of AML/KYC.


not a big problem for crypto-only transactions, which is why bitmex is so huge. operating a fiat exchange from the seychelles seems more problematic.

Poloniex has been dumped by Circle (presumably to protect Circle's US business):

https://www.coindesk.com/circle-to-spin-out-poloniex-exchange-less-than-2-years-after-400-million-takeover


If you have coins there, move them.

Note also that if there's an issue, it's incredibly difficult to use a company in the Seychelles.

Worse than that, Poloniex's terms requires you to agree that you shall not sue them...

This means that fiat operations are to be avoided at Poloniex.
But Poloniex golden days were related to crypto-to-crypto trading, maybe they want to focus on that.
Of course, with all this they should get rid of their KYC requirements, since nobody sane would give anymore their data.

It's the place to be if you have something to hide. There are more companies than citizens, during the Panama Papers scandal there were hundreds of companies located there.
There is no tax if you create an International Business Company (IBC). You only pay $100 per year no matter what it's the company's revenue. There is no accounting needed, you don't have to declare a ledger or anything. The second advantage is you can create the company without the need to disclose the identity of the person

KYC is truly annoying I agree, but I don't remember them losing money or circle being of any positivity for them since all it done is raise regulation and fees and minimums.
 Perhaps polo has a chance to go forward but I kinda doubt it tbh.

Doesn't really surprise me when you realize that one of Poloniex's backers is Goldman Sachs. Banksters always know where to go to circumvent laws and obfuscate some of their nefarious activities. I however don't think that Poloniex will stay in Seychelles for long as it has been a trend amongst non compliant exchanges to hop from one tax heaven to another. It won't take long before they run out of exotic countries to settle in.

It must be a sensitive spot still for the group of institutions having paid $400 million for an exchange not even worth a tenth of that amount now. Institutions fomo into crypto just as hard as noobies do. That clearly shows.

goldman sachs backed circle, who no longer owns poloniex. i assume the sale is complete because poloniex's website already says "Polo Digital Assets, Ltd" and they booted USA customers 10 days ago.

i don't think anybody knows who this mysterious new "asian investment group" is.

Correct, and if he doesn't want to reveal who he is, we will never know. Secrecy is at the roots of all Seychelles companies.

We may also question the existence of that Asian investment group. As of today, there's nothing to prove it's real.

They must have noticed how BitMEX managed to stay under the radar all of those years by sitting in that jurisdiction, where the islanders are of course happy to take tax income from these guys at minimum rate.

I enjoyed Polo's loan facility a lot back in 2017, but even then I knew the risk was always there that something like what happened back in June was there. I don't know which is worse, that they got away with it or that they actually made themselves look good by "generalizing" the losses to all customers. I got lucky but am never doing that again, not with so much money anyway.

Tell you what, all these loaning facilities so popular now in the industry, it's all going to end up badly.

P.S. I spent some time in Seychelles when working in East Africa. Was surprised by how cheap it could be for an island paradise.

Seriously? People should move their coins asap.

I wonder how many saps haven't read the terms and conditions and don't realise what they've signed up to?

are you referring to a mandatory arbitration clause? i know bitfinex has such a clause. it would be extremely difficult to go after bitfinex in the british virgin islands too. i think lots of exchanges write those into the user agreement, but whether those clauses are enforceable is another matter.

shady exchanges hide in shady jurisdictions. this is one reason why people are willing to pay such high fees on coinbase and gemini.

Well, pretty much nothing that Poloniex has done in living memory has in any way been reassuring in the slightest. This just continues that fine tradition. I'm beginning to wonder whether the whole thing is a performance art piece designed to make you reflect on the nature of competence.