Yes, exactly. This thread is just speculation. Poloniex is based in the U.S. and needs to pay the IRS taxes. The money that they owe from their .25% trading fee would make creating "fake volume" very costly for them, so really the entire notion doesn't make sense. They could be actively trading I guess, but that is a different thing.
Source: http://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/
Nearly 300 million in daily trade volume, their high rollers pay less in fees but Bots are market takers so a conservative estimate would be them getting .14% average of fees. That would be $420,000 a day in earnings. Now if most of that was "fake," they would be on the hook for a shit ton of tax dollars at the end of the year. A tax bill on earnings of 154 million dollars, no matter how many right offs, would be prohibitive if they were not actually earning that money.
Does anyone know
Bots are executing sells and buys (mostly) so makers fees apply. I am of course just picking the middle-ish number here. Even if their mean average was .10 it would still be relevant.
poloniex.com/feeTier/
Three years ago, Poloniex had some Bitcoin stolen. I lost some Bitcoin.
Busoni, the owner of Poloniex, paid it all back.
Busoni, the owner of Poloniex, paid it all back.
Same here. While idiot exchanges ran off with 50 BTC when hacked. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. Poloniex was smart and Busoni had integrity. Not sure how involved he is with the day to day anymore. He must be so rich now that I doubt he is heavily involved anymore. Anyhow, they still get the benefit of a doubt in my book.