I dont know how their accounts are setup. I dont believe they have bank accounts with customer money. If they do go bankrupt, the argument will likely be made that account holders have a lien against crypto assets in the amount of their various balances. Someone who has a 1 btc deposit will have a lien on 1 btc worth of their bitcoin and someone with a 1 ltc deposit has a lien on 1 ltc worth of litecoin.
Yeah, i also think they just store their customer's assets in a cold-storage somewhere. I'm kind of interested to know what the rules and regulations on that are, and to who these funds belong in the end.
Really curious actually.
I just know a couple other exchanges who do have custodial bank accounts, but knowing poloniex i wouldn't expect too much from them, much less so in a bankruptcy case, when i can't even under normal circumstances get my money out.
I don't believe poloniex has any customer money in bank accounts because they only trade crypto, and stablecoins.
Gemini for example has customer USD deposits in custodial bank accounts, however the purpose of this is so FDIC insurance gets passed along to customers in case the bank the deposits are being held in fails. My understanding is if an exchange were to hold customer deposits in an account titled in their corporate name, the corporation would have their deposits insured for only the first $250k of deposits, however an exchange holding USD deposits in a custodial account, each customer of the exchange has their USD deposit insured by FDIC insurance limits.
I don't believe the topic has been litigated in the courts, but I believe poloniex owns all coin in their cold/hot wallets and has a liability in the amount of customer deposits. When a customer deposits 1 BTC, both the assets and liabilities of poloniex will increase by the same amount. The important question is if customer deposits amount to an unsecured liability, or if customers have a generalized lien on poloniex's crypto holdings in the amount of their deposits.