Poloniex: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 3/10

Proof-of-reserves: does it exist, who attests it, does it include liabilities (a PoR without liabilities is close to meaningless), how often. Insurance fund: size, is the address public, and has it ever actually paid out. Hack history — and above all whether users were made whole. Licences by jurisdiction, and the enforcement record behind them. Every claim here is sourced to a primary document: a regulator’s register, a court filing, or the venue’s own published proof.

Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 19th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 0.80 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Monthly, Merkle-based, liabilities included, with open-source verification tools — and no named auditor anywhere in it. Poloniex builds the tree and checks its own homework. A $100m “user protection fund” announced in April 2026 — whose coverage scope, trigger mechanism and structure Poloniex says will be “disclosed in subsequent announcements”. No wallet addresses, no attestation. A fund whose rules are not published cannot be relied on, so we do not count it as theft protection.

True cost of trading: 5/10

Measured by us, not read off a fee page. We walk the live order book and fill $1,000 / $10,000 / $100,000 of BTC/USDT, then add the venue’s published taker fee. That sum — fee + spread + realised slippage — is the effective cost. Separately: the markup on network withdrawal fees, and the hidden spread inside “convert” / “buy in one click” flows.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 20th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.16 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 7/10

Order-book depth within ±0.1% and ±0.5% of mid, measured from the live book. Uptime over 12 months from the status page. Behaviour under stress: were there outages on days the market moved more than 5%.

Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 9th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.11 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 7/10

Number of pairs, adjusted for quality: the share of listings delisted within a year. Which networks are actually supported for deposit and withdrawal — not merely “supports USDT”.

Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 11th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.04 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

884 spot markets, fetched live from its own API

Fiat on/off ramp: 1/10

Which methods are actually available per country, their fees, and their limits per verification tier — read from the venue’s published terms and cited. Where a venue does not publish this, that opacity is itself the finding, and it scores accordingly.

Scored 1 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 22nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.49 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

None at all. There is no fiat deposit rail and no fiat withdrawal, in any currency — only crypto in, and a third-party card processor if you want to buy.

KYC and access: 8/10

Verification tiers and their limits, what is genuinely usable without verification, and the country deny-list — from the venue’s published policy, cited. A venue that will not tell you your withdrawal ceiling before you sign up is marked down for it.

Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 2nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.16 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Published clearly and generously: $10,000/day withdrawals with no ID at all (rising to $50,000 with 2FA), and $500,000/day once verified. United States: The US and all its territories are a Restricted Territory. Poloniex settled with OFAC in 2023 for about $7.6m over sanctions violations. European Union: None — absent from the ESMA register. No CASP authorisation after the MiCA transition closed on 1 July 2026.

Product, API and docs: 5/10

API documentation quality, whether rate limits are documented, whether a public status page with uptime history exists, and the API response latency we measured ourselves while pulling the order book.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 15th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.03 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

Documented API and rate limits. No status page — the domain does not even resolve.