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Poloniex Review: Affordable Crypto Trading Since 2014

Review Updated
Lyle Daly
By: Lyle Daly

Our Cryptocurrency Expert

Many or all of the products here are from our partners that compensate us. It’s how we make money. But our editorial integrity ensures our experts’ opinions aren’t influenced by compensation. Terms may apply to offers listed on this page.

Poloniex combines a massive number of cryptocurrencies with some of the lowest trading fees of any exchange. It also offers crypto trading for those who want to hedge or add leverage to their investments. Unfortunately, U.S. citizens and residents can't use this exchange, but it's a viable option for citizens of other countries. Read this Poloniex review to learn more.

Ratings Methodology

Bottom Line

The affordable trading fees make this exchange one of the best places to swap cryptocurrencies. It's not a great place to buy crypto, though, because fees are costly for bank account and card payments.

Fees:

0%-0.1550%

Account Minimum:

$0

Full Poloniex review

This cryptocurrency exchange is a good fit for: International users who want to save on fees when trading cryptocurrencies.

Pros

  • Large cryptocurrency selection
  • Low trading fees
  • Highly rated mobile app
  • Earn staking rewards
  • Crypto futures

Cons

  • Buying and selling fees
  • Unavailable in the United States

Top perks

Large cryptocurrency selection

With over 200 cryptocurrencies available, Poloniex has one of the deepest rosters among the major exchanges. You'll be able to find just about all types of cryptocurrencies on this exchange, from market leaders like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to smaller altcoins that haven't gotten so popular yet.

Low trading fees

Trading fees on Poloniex are some of the best in the business, which is an important consideration when you invest in cryptocurrency. The highest amount you'll pay for an order is 0.1550%.

You can get a 30% discount on trading fees if you pay them in TRON (TRX), as the team behind that cryptocurrency is partnered with Poloniex. It's also possible to get lower trading fees if you have at least $49 worth of TRON in your account or more than $50,000 in trading volume per 30-day period.

COMPARE MORE TRADING PLATFORMS: Best Cryptocurrency Apps and Exchanges

Highly-rated mobile app

Crypto exchange apps can be hit or miss. Poloniex has a quality mobile app with high ratings in both the App Store and Google Play. The app has most of the same features as the web platform and is a convenient way to access your crypto on your phone or tablet.

Earn staking rewards

Poloniex offers crypto staking, a way to put your funds to work and earn rewards on them. There are several different cryptocurrencies you can stake, and there's no lockup period required. You can deposit and withdraw your crypto at any time.

RELATED: See The Ascent's picks for the Best Crypto Staking Platforms.

Crypto futures

This exchange offers futures with up to 100-times leverage on Poloniex Futures. Note that it isn't available to residents of some regions, which are listed in Poloniex's user agreement and its FAQs.

A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price in the future. Futures are extremely risky, and even more so with cryptocurrencies, so they're not recommended unless you're an advanced investor.

LEARN MORE: Futures Trading: Everything You Need to Know

NFT marketplace

For those interested in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Poloniex is partnered with the APENFT marketplace. Poloniex users can access APENFT directly from the exchange. They can also get additional benefits on Poloniex if they own any NFTs from APENFT.

This market is highly speculative, so caution is advised when buying and selling NFTs. It's hard to predict whether NFTs will be viable as a long-term investment. But if you want to check out digital collectibles, art, or see what other types of NFTs are out there, Poloniex gives you a convenient way to do it.

Want to see more places to buy and sell NFTs? See The Ascent's picks for the Best NFT Marketplaces.

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What could be improved

Buying and selling fees

While Poloniex has cheap trading fees, its fees for buying and selling crypto are more expensive. It partners with Simplex, a payment processor, for these transactions.

If you buy crypto using a Simplex bank account, both Simplex and Poloniex take a 0.5% fee, so you pay 1% total. Considering many of the major exchanges let you deposit and withdraw money from a bank account free of charge, this is a notable disadvantage of Poloniex.

You can also pay with a credit or debit card. Simplex charges a fee of 3.5% to 5% for this, with a $10 minimum, and Poloniex also charges its own 0.75% fee.

Unavailable in the United States

Poloniex's user agreement prohibits U.S. citizens and residents from using it. The exchange was previously open to U.S. customers, but it had regulatory issues and shut down operations there in 2019. In 2021, it agreed to pay more than $10 million to settle a lawsuit with the SEC alleging that Poloniex operated an unregistered digital asset exchange.

Alternatives to consider

If you're looking for a U.S. crypto exchange: Gemini is committed to following all government regulations and is licensed to operate in all 50 states. It's also one of the best exchanges no matter your experience level, as it has both beginner-friendly and advanced trading platforms.

If you want a wide variety of advanced options: Binance is one of the most feature-packed crypto exchanges. In addition to standard crypto trading, it offers margin trading, futures, leveraged tokens, and yield farming where you can earn crypto rewards.

Offer


Rating
Rating image, 4.50 out of 5 stars.
4.50/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
= Best
= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
Commissions
$0.99-$2.99 orders < $200, 1.49% for orders at least $200 (default), 0% - 0.40% (Gemini ActiveTrader)
0.02% to 0.1%
Next Steps

How Poloniex works

Poloniex is designed for cryptocurrency trading, and specifically swapping different types of cryptocurrency, such as trading Bitcoin for Ethereum. Poloniex offers over 500 spot trading pairs, so there are all kinds of trades you can make.

Unlike other exchanges, Poloniex isn't set up to process cryptocurrency purchases and sales itself. It does, however, let you buy some cryptocurrencies through a payment processing partner, Simplex. You can pay using a debit card or credit card, but fees are on the high side.

Users in supported countries can also buy and sell crypto using a Simplex bank account. Transaction fees are lower with this payment method than with card payments.

In addition to spot trading, Poloniex offers futures. Clients can trade perpetual swap contracts and get up to 100-times leverage on several major cryptocurrencies. There's significant risk involved with crypto futures, but for investors who are interested, Poloniex is one of the exchanges that has this feature available.

Fees overview

Poloniex uses a tier system to determine trading fees, with customers in higher tiers paying cheaper fees. The exchange also gives you a 30% discount on trading fees when you pay those trading fees in TRON (TRX).

Here's the full trading fee structure on Poloniex:

Tier 30-day trading volume Maker/taker fee TRX maker/taker fee
1 Under $50,000 (and less than $49 of TRX) 0.1450%/0.1550% 0.1015%/0.1085%
2 Under $50,000 (and $49 or more of TRX) 0.1150%/0.1250% 0.0805%/0.0875%
3 $50,000 to $1,000,000 0.1050%/0.1200% 0.0735%/0.0840%
4 $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 0.0700%/0.1150% 0.0490%/0.0805%
5 $10,000,000 to $50,000,000 0.0500%/0.1100% 0.0350%/0.0770%
6 Over $50,000,000 0.0200%/0.1000% 0.0140%/0.0700%
Poloniex Plus Silver N/A (requires application) 0.0000%/0.0600% 0.0000%/0.0420%
Poloniex Plus Gold N/A (requires application) 0.0000%/0.0400% 0.0000%/0.0280%
Data source: Poloniex.

A few of the tiers can be a bit tricky to understand. Here's a quick rundown of how they all work:

  • The first two tiers are based on whether you have at least $49 worth of TRX in your account. If so, you're in tier 2 and pay lower fees. If not, you're in tier 1 and pay more.
  • Tiers 3 through 6 are based on your trading volume in U.S. dollars.
  • Poloniex Plus Silver and Gold are VIP programs that require an application. The exchange doesn't provide information on eligibility criteria.

For futures trading, Poloniex charges a maker fee of 0.01% and a taker fee of 0.075%.

Buying and selling fees

Poloniex partners with Simplex for payment processing. Customers can buy and sell crypto with a Simplex bank account or credit and debit cards. With each type of payment method, there are fees charged by Simplex and Poloniex:

Payment method Simplex fee Poloniex fee
Simplex bank account 0.50% 0.50%
Credit or debit card 3.50% - 5.00% ($10 minimum) 0.75%
Data source: Poloniex.

Cryptocurrency selection

Poloniex has an extremely large selection of over 300 cryptocurrencies. There aren't any notable gaps in its lineup, as it has just about all of the biggest cryptocurrencies and plenty of altcoins.

You can only buy a small fraction of these cryptocurrencies using cash. The majority of what Poloniex has is trading pairs, meaning you trade one cryptocurrency for another.

That means to get access to most of Poloniex's lineup, you need to buy another cryptocurrency first, with Tether (USDT) being one of the most popular options. After that, you can trade for anything Poloniex offers.

While a large selection is normally a good thing, there is a caveat with Poloniex. The exchange has a reputation for listing just about anything, including outright pump-and-dump crypto scams. As an example, it offers Squid Game (SQUID), a crypto that was revealed to be an exit scam. Because of Poloniex's lack of scrutiny, it's even more important to do your own research on any cryptocurrency you're considering.

Is your cryptocurrency safe with Poloniex?

Poloniex doesn't have the best track record in terms of security, and its connection to TRON's controversial founder, Justin Sun, is a red flag.

There have been numerous issues with Poloniex over the years. Here's a quick breakdown of the most notable:

  • Hackers stole 97 BTC from Poloniex in March 2014, which was 12.3% of the exchange's supply. In response, it temporarily reduced customer balances by 12.3% and increased trade fees to raise money. It repaid customers in full by July of that year.
  • A list of alleged account emails and passwords at Poloniex was posted on Twitter in December 2019. According to a Poloniex representative, only 5.5% of the emails on the list were associated with accounts. Those users were required to reset their passwords.
  • Poloniex agreed to pay the SEC over $10 million in August 2021. The settlement was related to charges for operating an unregistered online digital asset exchange.

There's also the TRON connection. TRON's founder, Justin Sun, is one of the investors in a group that bought Poloniex. A 2022 report alleges that Sun has considerable control over Poloniex and that at one point, he instructed employees to fake the KYC (know your customer) identity verification process to speed up user adoption.

In addition, that report claims Sun ordered Poloniex engineers to look for Bitcoin that customers had mistakenly deposited into the wrong type of crypto wallet over the years. In total, 230 BTC were siphoned out of those old crypto wallets to the Poloniex communal wallet. It's impossible to tell where it went after that because of the massive amount of funds going through that communal wallet.

It's difficult to fully assess Poloniex's security, because the exchange isn't entirely open about what protections it offers. It doesn't have a dedicated security page on its website, and it doesn't explain how much crypto it keeps in cold storage, or if it has any type of insurance. We do, however, know of a few solid protections that Poloniex has in place:

  • Two-factor authentication (2FA)
  • Email notifications of account logins from new IP addresses with the option to freeze the account if the login was unauthorized
  • A bug bounty program

Those issues make it hard to trust Poloniex. If you do use it, you may want to at least store your cryptocurrency yourself to keep it safe.

RELATED: How to Safely Store Cryptocurrency

Poloniex is right for you if:

  • You want access to a large selection of cryptocurrency trading pairs.
  • You're interested in crypto futures trading.
  • You're not a U.S. citizen or resident.

Our Cryptocurrency Expert