Who owns and operates Bittrex and Poloniex? How are the licensed? Do they keep customer funds segregated from operating funds?
Poloniex is owned by a guy named Tristan D'Agosta. He's a little bit less easy to track down, but does seem to be a real, known person with a real history and life.
I don't know how they each separate customer and operating funds, but i'm sure the Bittrex guys at least would probably be happy to tell you if you ask in their Slack channel, assuming they don't consider it a security risk.