Noted cryptocurrency exchange, Poloniex, in a recent statement, has announced that it will be offering a 65% Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on USDC deposits and 8.5% on USDT (Tether) for lenders located in the European Union.
EU customers: Got $USDC or $USDT? Get interest ?
Starting now, USDC & USDT lending is open for EU customers pic.twitter.com/JAMdL4xV1I
— Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) December 17, 2019
The announcement was met with a lot of reaction online, with Mati Greenspan, Founder of QuantumEconomics, responding to the post and saying,
Wait a minute!! How are they able to offer 8.5% interest??
That's way above what the market is currently paying.
— Mati Greenspan [not trading advice] (@MatiGreenspan) December 18, 2019
Poloniex Customer Support also tweeted back saying that the team was continuing to work through what the next steps were and that they would keep viewers updated.
We're sorry for being quiet on this and we know it's frustrating. The team is continuing to work through what the next steps are. We'll provide more detailed updates as they're available
— Poloniex Customer Support (@PoloSupport) December 17, 2019
This announcement came as a surprise to many as just a week ago, CoinMetrics reported that Poloniex was down to about one-seventh of the Ethereum deposits it had in January 2018. The report also said that its BTC deposits were even lower.
The report read,
“Poloniex’s supply of BTC and ETH plummeted after Circle’s acquisition, and are now at their lowest levels since early 2016. “
Poloniex isn’t the only platform to offer such rates, however. Two other platforms, Coinbase and Compound, offer the same; Coinbase is offering 1.25% for USDC, while Compound is currently providing 8.4%.
TRON’s Justin Sun, who also happens to be a Poloniex investor, tweeted out to Poloniex post the announcement. He tweeted,
APR 65.46%？I have 100 million #USDC and want to deposit? $USDC $USDT https://t.co/WWMJo4pExe
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) December 17, 2019
Launched in 2014, Poloniex has had its share of ups and downs, with the exchange now ranked 13th on CoinMarketCap’s new liquidity metric rankings. However, the exchange has been in troubled waters for some time now.
Recently, the exchange delisted Digibyte and it was also in the news for the loss of 1800 BTC from its margin lending pool. This U.S.-based crypto-exchange lost approximately 1,800 BTC, but promised to recover the losses of margin trades in an official statement.
Poloniex also recently released a statement in which it said that projects could be delisted if it no longer satisfied certain important criteria.
It said,
“As part of our continuous effort to improve the performance of the exchange and better serve our customers, we may delist certain assets from time to time.”
