It looks like more than half of the spot trading pairs on Poloniex are not being used, which shows that the site is not being used as much as it used to be. analyst found some worrying trends in the data: over 500 trading pairs had very little or no trading traffic.
The cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex, which was bought by Justin Sun in 2019, doesn’t seem to have many active users because most of its spot trading pairs don’t see much trading action.
The exchange recently shared information about spot trading pairs over the last 24 hours. As of May 13, 521 out of 981 pairs had daily trading volume of less than $1 or even $0. This is equal to about 53% of all the pairs that are listed on the market.
Poloniex Spot Trading Trends
A closer look at the data shows that Poloniex users heavily rely on USDT, the stablecoin created by Tether. An amazing 810 pairs on Poloniex are tied to USDT, making up almost 83% of all spot trading pairs. On the other hand, only eight pairs are linked to Ethereum (ETH) and 72 pairs are linked to Bitcoin (BTC), which is about 0.816% and 7.34% of all pairs.
Concerns have been raised about the over-reliance on USDT, especially after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that Tether might be looked at more closely by regulators. Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said that these worries were just “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” (FUD) meant to make the company’s market situation less stable. However, Poloniex could have problems if problems arise with USDT.
Not having a USDT/USD trade pair on the platform makes things worse because a large number of USDT withdrawals caused by government pressure could affect Poloniex’s operations in a way similar to a bank run. At the time this story was written, Analyst had asked Poloniex for a statement but had not yet heard back. As the situation changes, we will let you know.
