Last week we reported some Redditor suggested Binance, Poloniex, and Bittrex could have the same secret owner, and we tried to find out, who runs Binance. Today let’s take a closer look at another exchange, Poloniex.
Poloniex was founded in USA in 2014 by a man named Tristan D’Agosta. There’s not much information on him as he tends to keep his profile low. His LinkedIn page reports that he studied music and worked as a freelance writer and composer. In 2010 he formed a publishing company Polonius Sheet Music specialising in music literature and score. Web‐archive keeps now‐defunct site of Polonius run by Tristan D’Agosta linking with his personal site with the sole picture on it. The only text there explains that he writes music for cinema, ballet etc.
Out of the blue in 2014 D’Agosta founded cryptoexchange Poloniex, which eventually became Top 20 cryptoexchange. Another Redditor determined that one of the early investors was an IT‐professional Matthew Reiser.
In 2018 fintech payment company Circle Internet Financial Ltd. acquired Poloniex, and according to the Fortune magazine the deal was estimated at $400 mln, while 30% of it was backed by Goldman Sachs. With the acquisition of Poloniex, Circle’s p2p‐payment services get some new direction with a perspective to become first regulated cryptoexchange. The “New York Times” writer Nathaniel Popper tweeted from the Circle’s private presentation slides showing that they were going to obtain an ATS license over time as well.
Circle, in turn, was formed in 2013 by two entrepreneurs Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville. They managed to raise $136 mln over 3 years from big venture capital funds such as Goldman Sachs and Jim Breyer’s IDG Capital Partners. As Fortune reported Circle has a lot of strategic Chinese investors including Fenbushi Capital, China Everbright Investment Management, China International Capital Corporation, and Baidu Ventures.
Poloniex is often criticized for its poor customer support services, arbitrary account freezing, and some issues with money withdrawals. Circle promised to clean up the mess but they still haven’t gotten anywhere as complaints keep going.
Nevertheless, Poloniex is owned by relatively transparent and obvious enterprise, apart from Binance. However, there’s no direct connection between two. Next time let’s examine Bittrex.
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