Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex was founded in 2014 and was at that time known for its listings of newer altcoins in a time where most of the trading activity still focused on Bitcoin (BTC). The exchange was bought in 2018 by Circle and sold at considerable loss to an Asian consortium within 2 years amidst cases brought to the exchange by a number of governmental agencies which resulted in high fines and settlements. These regulatory issues seem ongoing with a 10 Million dollar SEC fine at the beginning of August this year.
BCHA Support after the Split
When the Bitcoin Cash chain split in November 2020, resulting in the creation of Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA), the exchange decided to support the minority chain and those holding BCH found both BCH and BCHA credited to their account. A BCHA/USDT trading pair was offered but the exchange never proceeded to enable the wallets for deposits and withdrawals.
BCHA/USDT Trading Disabled, Balance Disappears
Not long after the rebranding and redenomination announcement by the Bitcoin ABC team, shortly before July 1st 2021, and while other exchanges were completing the change to the new eCash branding and the redenomination to a smaller eCash (XEC) unit, Poloniex halted trading and users saw their BCHA balances disappear. Although no rebranding schedule had been announced, users of the exchange and others believed this to mean the exchange was working on converting users balanced to the XEC unit and that soon there would be listing of XEC and an XEC/USDT market for them to again trade on.
Patience Waning
Unfortunately Poloniex management has remained silent, while users have now been waiting for well over a month with absolutely no sign of any progress and no sign of their holdings. The patience of the users affected by this event is running out, as they lost the opportunity of taking profits last week, when XEC prices rose to $0.00033265, gaining almost 400% in less than a month, according to data taken from CoinGecko.
“The BCHA wallet that you are referring to isn’t working properly, so we temporarily disabled it.
We are working to have the wallet reenabled as soon as possible, but we don’t have an estimate on the timeline at the moment. We will notify you here once the wallet is reenabled. At that time deposits will credit automatically and withdrawals will be enabled. Thanks for your patience and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Frustrated Customers
eCash NEWS Today spoke with another user with BCHA / eCash holdings on the exchange. He confirmed the reply he had received from their customer support was very similar to the one posted on Reddit and he voiced his frustration with the exchange when he said:
“Polo(niex) is really crap, listing every sh#t token, doing stupid games, but dragging their feet with this.”
The user continued that he is happy that he bought many of his eCash coins on other exchanges and has them safely stored in a non-custodial wallet but fearing there may be a chance these coins will never be released to him he hopes that people will continue to raise awareness of this issue.
Other Exchanges Fully Functional
Most exchanges have now fully rebranded and enabled XEC deposits and withdrawals weeks ago. Exchanges like Binance, Coinex and OKEx are operating the newly branded and redenominated currency wallets without any noticeable issues.
A few that have not completed the rebranding yet, are at this time still offering a trading pair with the larger BCHA unit and have made announcements stating their intent to complete the rebranding and redenomination in the near future. Upbit is even known to still allow deposits and withdrawals in their BCHA branded and denominated wallets so there are no signs of any issues causing a need to close BCHA wallets completely.
Reason Unknown
Looking at everything there seems to be no explanation for why Poloniex says it is experiencing issues that cause their BCHA wallet to “not work properly”, or why they are not able to complete the rebranding to eCash (XEC) and resume trading as well as enabling deposits and withdrawals. Other exchanges have managed to complete the work and are offering complete service for eCash and there have also been no reported network issues that could offer any explanation. So it looks like the cause of the problem users are facing most likely lies with Poloniex itself.
Bitcoin ABC is known to have offered help and technical support to all of the exchanges to make the redenomination and rebrand of eCash go as smoothly as possible. However, Poloniex seems to be taking its time to make the necessary arrangements that would allow their customers to trade and transact their coins that are still held by the exchange.
Keep Asking For A Solution
eCash News Today encourages users to continue to politely remind Poloniex of the ongoing issue and keep insisting for a speedy solution. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and notify users of any news through our ecash News Telegram channel or in a future publication. Hopefully this situation will be resolved in the near future.
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