Poloniex, Bitfinex, Bittrex... completely full of problems

[MAbtc]

They could have quadrupled their support staff (or more), hired lots of competent engineers, etc. in this time. They have been making incredible amounts of money, so it's worrisome that they haven't fixed these issues months later.

I hope they don't have bigger legal concerns occupying their time and money.... they did just update their terms, but I can't understand what they changed exactly.

Basically they added in multiple places "we aren't responsible of anything", a class action waiver and you allowed them to share your information with third parties.

That's worrying. Not because adding such terms absolves them of responsibility, but because their legal team is dumb enough to think adding these clauses can save them from US law enforcement and civil proceedings. There are two large worries at this point: 1) a Cryptsy-like hack/scam where, slowly, more and more users are unable to withdraw. 2) A shutdown by US law enforcement for lack of registration as an MSB in all the states they serve. I'm leaning towards the former as the most likely to happen first.

[btcney]

When I see the Exchanges section in the Service Discussion every day, there's no single day I don't see a complaint against one of these exchanges.

Now, I understand that every company with a rather big amount of users is going to have complaints.

However it is unreasonable that there are so many complaints and so many problems with all three exchanges I mentioned.

Do you think they are purposely making some of these problems "appear" it is it just a consequence of the increase in volumes in the last few weeks?

Even if that's the reason, they have no reason not to hire more people and get better servers.

I am not happy with Kraken's trading engine, but I've not heard any horror stories about accounts being blocked or withdrawals being "stuck".

Yes. I had just actually answered one of these threads.

It really seems like exchanges that were extremely trustworthy before are now somehow all having problems of some kind.

Is it a consequence of the increase in volume? I think that is definitely a part of why there has been so many complaints. Bigger volume simply is going to be more trades, and more people complaining about their trades/account balances.

The thing is all of these exchanges are semi-regulated, they are not deregulated nor completely regulated, meaning that you can't really land your finger on who to blame and where to complain.

The only way that you can establish contact with the actual exchange is through support tickets which often go unanswered for months in polo's case. This in my opinion is probably one of the biggest problems. There needs to be some kind of movement where startup exchanges offer 24/7 phone support that is responsive. So IMO, poor customer support is where the issue is right now. This NEEDS to be addressed.

[MAbtc]

It really seems like exchanges that were extremely trustworthy before are now somehow all having problems of some kind.

The exchange situation has been getting progressively worse for years. Kind of odd, given all the opportunity for exchange operators in the space. Scottrade and E-trade are charging low flat fees per trade, and we chumps are paying a percentage! It's highway robbery when you think about it. To boot, the well-regulated exchanges, Bitstamp and Coinbase, are fairly illiquid and have subpar trading engines and APIs.

Is it a consequence of the increase in volume? I think that is definitely a part of why there has been so many complaints. Bigger volume simply is going to be more trades, and more people complaining about their trades/account balances.

I'd really like to think so, especially for Poloniex's sake. The fact is, they could have (and should have) hired zounds of new support staff and engineers to get their system working reliably and to keep their customers happy. Instead, people keep telling me they are waiting for withdrawals for weeks upon weeks. That's scary as hell.

[NABiT]

I have no funds left now on Bittrex or Poloniex, never had a problem at Bittrex and the one problem I had at Poloniex was long ago, wasn’t a withdrawal issue and was quickly dealt with but it is clearly getting too hectic at the exchanges now and stuck withdrawals are a torture even for small amounts.

For the record, no problem with the last withdrawal yesterday. (XRP)

If things quieten down a bit I might use either again at some point or in the meantime anyway for a one off trade if I can’t find anywhere quieter, just not comfortable leaving funds there for any length of time which is bad practice anyway.

Come to think of it I’m not sure anywhere is quiet nowadays.

[MAbtc]

If things quieten down a bit I might use either again at some point or in the meantime anyway for a one off trade if I can’t find anywhere quieter, just not comfortable leaving funds there for any length of time which is bad practice anyway.

Come to think of it I’m not sure anywhere is quiet nowadays.

That's the general feeling. US law enforcement is very active targeting darknet markets; now it seems they are going after unregulated exchanges as well. I honestly didn't expect that.... maybe a hefty FINCEN fine against BTC-e, but I never expected a seizure like that. They must have known that they wouldn't be able to recover most of the crypto, and that this would likely guarantee massive customer losses.

For this reason (even though I don't think the US government views Polo and Bittrex like BTC-e), I am wary of using exchanges that serve US customers without proper licensing in every US state.

[krizniq]

so what is conclusion? because of course we all have our stashes in safe, but when you want to transfer them to fiat .... you simply have to trust exchange till they deposit your money to your account

as I can see in here, there are random problems everywhere.
I've done withdrawal from stamp to my bank without issues last year, but since then a lot of things going on so how we can be really sure?