Poloniex Tightens Its KYC Requirements for Legacy and New Users

There is never a boring day in the world of cryptocurrency, even when the price of Bitcoin is not headed in the right direction. The Poloniex exchange was once one of the bigger altcoin trading platforms in the world. It has since lost some of its popularity, and the company’s latest decision will not help matters much. A forced KYC implementation will annoy a lot of users, for rather obvious reasons.

An Interesting Change by Poloniex

In the world of cryptocurrency, there is a growing focus on KYC and AML verification. This has caused a fair few issues for cryptocurrency trading platforms, regardless of whether they support fiat currencies or not. Additionally, the users of such trading platforms will have to adhere to some new guidelines which they may or may not like.

For Poloniex users, a lot of changes are on the horizon. More specifically, there is a new implementation of KYC rules which will limit withdrawals to $2,000 if one is a legacy user. Anyone who does not fall into this category will be given a $0 withdrawal limit until he or she completes the proper verification procedure. Users of non-legacy accounts seemingly have seven days to adhere to these guidelines.

Even legacy account owners should get their Poloniex account verified as quickly as possible. Failure to do so will result in having restrictions placed on one’s account and the inability to withdraw money. It is not a positive course of action by any means, although it is not unlike what Bittrex has done in the past few months. The latter exchange also imposed limits on individuals unless they were legacy users or people who had verified their accounts.

As part of the Poloniex verification process, users will need to submit a valid government-issued ID card or passport. Additionally, they will need to take a selfie to prove that they are submitting their own information. This is in line with how other cryptocurrency exchanges verify people’s identities these days. Anyone who successfully completes the verification process will have their limits raised to $25,000 per day.

All of this further confirms that the cryptocurrency industry direly needs decentralized exchanges to get to the next stage. Although it is understandable why centralized service providers need to adhere to guidelines and laws, a lot of users are put off by these requirements. 

Moreover, introducing such harsh changes without prior warning will not be to the liking of a lot of Poloniex users. After all, they are being thrown for a loop and have just seven days to comply. This is seven days since receiving an email, mind you, not seven days since logging in after receiving the message. Even so, not all legacy users have received this communication, which paints a rather interesting picture for the future of Poloniex and its users.