Kraken
| Year | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Jesse Powell |
| Origin | USA |
Today the Kraken exchange is confidently holding leading positions on the market. It’s due to the fact that this platform has never been hacked unlike its competitors, and in the volume rating it’s occupying a confident second place. But is everything as serene as it appears to be? We’re going to analyze major pros and cons in this review and answer the question how worthy this resource is.
History of developing
The Kraken exchange was founded in 2011. It’s far from being the most “mature” company in the cryptocurrency sphere, but still it’s nearly impossible to find even a novice trader who hasn’t heard about this exchange. But why? From one hand, leading global mass-medias mention this resource in their reviews quite often. The Kraken exchange has been able to win recognition of such media giants as The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg Businessweek. From the other hand – the legendary scandal associated with MT Gox back in 2014 has brought a large number of new users to Kraken . Let’s recall the essence of the story: if you wanted to withdraw at least some of your savings from Mt Gox, registration at this exchange was inevitable.
Among image advantages we should also highlight the location of the company – the high-tech city of San-Francisco. The Kraken team is conducting active work with opinions’ leaders. Top market experts resort to analysis of the resource. All in all, the Kraken team has been able to form a reliable image over the last 7 years. We’ll point out the fact that it’s being intensively supported by activities in the project’s official social networks.
The exchange’s development forecast for 2019-2020
The Kraken exchange has already risen significantly. It’s considered to be a standard of security and technological effectiveness. The platform is holding leading positions on the cryptocurrency exchange market. At the same time experts note that the Kraken exchange still has great prospects for development. For example, nowadays the company still doesn’t work with Russian-speaking public. The interface of the exchange’s official website is provided only in English and Japanese.
How the exchange may be applied?
The interface of the exchange itself doesn’t have distinct features, but both novice and experienced traders will find it comfortable to work on the platform. A lack of a Russian version is a minus – Russians will have to explore the platform in English.
Registration
Registration on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange’s official website is performed in a way common to most Internet users. First of all, press the “Sign up” button in the upper right corner or fill in the form directly on the main page.
In the first case a registration form with blank obligatory fields will appear.
Throughout the registration process it’s necessary to:
- provide a personal e-mail;
- think of a strong password;
- specify a login.
At this point it’s also necessary to accept the conditions of working with the service. After these simple steps you’ll get a letter with a request to confirm your e-mail by entering an activation code.
After the confirmation of the e-mail address you’ll be able to move to a verification procedure. Considering the fact that the exchange has never been hacked, the verification process will have a number of stages. Only after the completion of the verification procedure users get access to personal accounts on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange’s official website.
Review of verification levels
5 levels of verification are provided on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange :
- Zero level (tier 0) is available literally in a few seconds after the completion of registration, but you won’t be able to access nearly all functions, withdrawal and deposit of funds will also be unavailable.
- For tier 1 verification you should provide your first and second names, date of birth, country of residence and contact phone number. On tier 1 of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange you’ll gain access to creation of deposits and also withdrawal and trading of virtual currencies. There are restrictions concerning withdrawal of funds which depend on your country of residence. At this point you’ll be able to withdraw up to $ 5000 in cryptocurrency equivalent or up to $ 2000 in fiat money a day, monthly limits – $ 50 000 and $ 10 000 respectively. The tier 1 verification is completed rather fast – it won’t take more than a minute.
- To proceed to tier 2 in order to extend functionality, including such in marginal trading, it’s necessary to provide a valid identity document.
- Tier 3 offers significantly larger daily and monthly limits. For example, up to $ 200 000 could be withdrawn at a time either in cryptocurrency or in fiat money.
- Tier 4 is necessary for corporate clients. It’s provided for clients who has concluded a corporate contract and a number of other required agreements. The verification process to a certain level has to be completed gradually, step by step. The required data can be found on the personal account page. You’ll also have to enter information and upload personal documents there.
Available deposit and withdrawal currencies on the Kraken exchange
From our point of view, one of the obvious advantages and a reason of popularity of the Kraken exchange is the possibility to deposit and withdraw funds in different currencies. Users have access not only to popular coins and Bitcoin, but to currencies common in the offline world such as USD, EUR, GBP. Kraken also accepts CAD and even JPY. A large amount of pairs is available on the Kraken exchange. More than 150 pairs are provided – a significant number for this sphere. Obviously, the most substantial amounts are involved in usual pairs: Bitcoin, Ethereum, EUR, Ethereum Classic, USD, Litecoin, Dash and others. According to a number of ratings, the exchange is confidently holding the second position – only Poloniex is ahead of Kraken . Another advantage and a guarantee of stability is the exchange’s average daily volume of trading. It’s about $ 120 000 000.
How to trade?
The interface of the exchange cannot be described as the most convenient one. You’ll have to navigate through numerous tabs in order to work with different options. Traders also have to deal with a lack of visualization. Still, a book of orders and a convenient form for buying/selling available coins are provided here.
Moreover, the order form is presented in different types: simple, intermediate and advanced. The most complicated one has significantly more options and a number of types of orders, including market, limit, stop-loss.
Such a distinction between orders ensures a maximum possible comfort of working on the exchange for people with different levels of experience and knowledge.
Fees or “size matters”
As on any other exchange, the fees have a particular schedule. The more you trade, the less you pay, and this rule works precisely vice versa: the less you trade, the higher the fees are. According to the values provided, the maker fee varies from 0,16 to 0,00 %, and the taker one – from 0,26 % to 0,1 %. The fact that information about all fees is presented on the official website in as much detail as possible can be added to the Kraken exchange’s advantages list.
Security and reliability
As it has been mentioned above, Kraken has never been cracked since its inception. An inviolable rule is applied among other security methods of the platform: all new deposits appear directly in cold (offline) wallets. Reserves are held full in an obligatory way in order to exclude a possibility of bankruptcy.
Pros and cons
As any other cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken has its advantages and disadvantages. The positive sides of the system are:
- a large number of currency pairs (not only cryptocurrency, but also fiat money);
- availability of marginal trading;
- long working experience;
- high level of security;
- flexible system of verification (it’s not necessary to reveal one’s personality completely and send confirming documents in order to work on the exchange);
- an application for iOS devices.
One of the main disadvantages is a lack not only of a Russian version, but also of a translation of the exchange into other popular world languages – you’ll have to work entirely in English or Japanese interface. An inability to deposit RUR can also be added to this list.
Latest news of Kraken
News of July 19
The US-based crypto exchange, Kraken, has a new team member. The company hired the ex-director of over-the-counter trading platform B2C2 to lead the development at its new BTC futures’ operation. The name of the head of development is Kevin Beardsley, and he previously managed the UK-based company. Kevin will now be responsible for the expansion of Kraken Futures as volumes reached $2.5 billion in June 2019. The newly hired head of development at Kraken said that he knew what people were looking for and how to meet those needs.
The exchange raised $13 million in funding last month and is taking a competing position with a variety of futures’ options for digital assets, with several ones surfacing from other trading platforms such as Huobi and Binance.
News of June 19
The American digital asset exchange, Kraken, reported in June 2019, that more than a quarter of its employees are paid in bitcoins. The company has reported this information using their Twitter account. Kraken stressed, that back in 2012, they had an employee who was paid in bitcoins, and a year later he quit. In total, the company employs about 800 people.
Earlier, on May 20, Kraken sent out a letter to users, offering a “rare but limited opportunity” to purchase stock exchange shares. The letter also says that the trading platform has entered into a partnership with the BnkToTheFuture platform for the issue of preferred shares. Professional and accredited investors could purchase the stocks from $1,000 until June 20.
However, Kraken didn’t manage to avoid the troubles completely as Jonathan Silverman, a former Kraken employee, sued them, accusing the platform management of not paying him for the work done. Silverman claims that except for the contract he signed, a verbal agreement was made that he will be paid 10% of the annual profit of the trading department. This issue still persists and it’s not clear how it will influence the company eventually.
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