Kraken Review - Safe and Easy Platform (2022)

American society Kraken, founded in 2011, is the largest cryptobourse in terms of trading Bitcoin and altcoins in euros. It is also one of the safest exchanges, due to its comprehensive range of security measures, self-regulated approach and security audits. Another The big plus is that its fees are among the lowest in the industry. In addition, you can trade on the go using its mobile app.

Basic information

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Kraken reviews

Kraken offers a wide range of different trading options, ranging from entering standard limit orders and stop-loss orders to margin and dark pool trading. It allows trading not only between cryptocurrency pairs, but also between fiat currencies (eg pounds, euros), so it is an excellent fiat-to-crypto gateway. Over the years, the cryptocurrency sector has made a name for itself with the following key characteristics:

• Fiat-to-crypto gate with high liquidity. Kraken allows you to trade more than a hundred cryptocurrencies in more than 140 markets with six fiat currencies: US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Japanese Yen (JPY), British Pounds (GBP) and Swiss Francs (CHF).
• Dark pool. If you are looking for an exchange with an invisible order book, look no further. In the dark pool, every trader only knows his orders and can trade anonymously without showing his interest to other traders.
• Over The Counter (OTC) service. High-volume traders can use Kraken's one-on-one OTC service.
• 24/7 customer support. Kraken offers 24/7 global online customer support chat in case you have any questions or problems using the exchange.
• Margin and futures trading. The Kraken Exchange offers margin trading with up to 5 times leverage and futures with 50 times leverage.
• Forex trading. In addition to cryptocurrency trading, you can also exchange your fiat currency for one of six other supported fiat currencies.
• Secure and trusted platform. Kraken is a leader in cryptocurrency security. It has never been hacked before, so you can sleep well, even if your funds are left in the stock market.

Overall, Kraken is an old and well-known cryptocurrency exchange for traders looking for a gateway to and exit for Fiat. It comes with a number of features and advanced trading options for every experienced trader, as well as easy trading options for beginning cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

History

Kraken was founded in 2011 by early cryptocurrencyist Jess Powell and launched in 2013. Since then, it has become one of the most recognized exchanges in the industry. Kraken, based in San Francisco, USA, is a fully regulated stock exchange, which means that in order to trade, you must pass the Know Your Customer (KYC) inspection. In addition, it is the stock exchange that the Tokyo District Court has chosen to deal with customer compensation claims related to the infamous Mt. Gox in 2014.

Over the years, Kraken has built a reputation as a safe place and a popular choice among traders and institutional investors. It was the first cryptocurrency exchange to be crypto-audited by Proof-of-Reserves and provides Bloomberg Terminal with information on the market price of cryptocurrencies.

Kraken is a self-regulated exchange and complies with rules and regulations in all supported jurisdictions. It is registered as a Money Services Business (MSB) with FinCEN in the United States and FINTRAC in Canada. Kraken Futures is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.

The stock exchange is headquartered in San Francisco, but has offices in various cities around the world, including London in the United Kingdom, Chiyoda City in Japan and Singapore. The Kraken Stock Exchange has raised more than $ 126 million in venture capital. As such, it has purchased a number of crypto-oriented startups, such as CryptoWatch, CleverCoin, Coinsetter, Cavirter, Bit Trade, Crypto Facilities and InterChange.

Today, the stock exchange serves approximately 7 million customers in more than 200 countries.

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Kraken fees

Low fees are one of the biggest attractions of the Kraken stock exchange. All fees are charged on a per-transaction basis, except for deposit and withdrawal fees. Kraken uses a typical macro-taker fee plan based on traded cryptocurrencies and the volume the user traded in the previous 30 days.

All trading fees fall into four categories: regular trading fees, stablecoin trading fees, dark pool trading fees and margin trading fees.

Routine trading fees range from 0.16 % for creators and 0.26 % for recipients, but can be as high as 0.00 % (maker) and 0.10 % (taker) for users trading over $ 10,000,000 per month .

Business fees involving stablecoins are subject to different fees. Here you pay 0.20 % or less (based on 30-day volume) per trade, regardless of whether you are on the side of the recipient or the creator of the trade. Traders exchanging more than $ 1,000,000 a month in stablecoins pay no fees.

Kraken fees are cheaper compared to Bitstamp (0.5 % per trade), but slightly more expensive than Coinbase Pro (0.15 % maker and 0.25 % taker) and Bitfinex, which boasts the cheapest execution fees orders between major fiat-to-crypto exchanges (0.10 % maker, 0.20 % taker).

Dark pool traders are charged the most - initially you pay a fee of 0.36 %, which is the same for traders and market makers. If you trade more than $ 10,000,000 per month, dark pool fees can be as much as 0.20 % per trade.

Last but not least, different rates apply to Kraken margin trading. Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), EUR and USD pairs have an opening fee of 0.01 % and a rollover fee of 0.01 % every 4 hours, while other cryptocurrencies cost 0.02 % to open a trade and pays the same fee of 0.02 % every four hours.

As such, Kraken charges less than all major margin exchanges, although these trades are more expensive the longer your position remains open.

Margin limits depend on your verification level. The maximum leverage available at the Kraken is 5x.

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Deposits and withdrawals

For deposits, these are free for the vast majority of cryptocurrencies. For some newer or less common currencies, such as Augur (REP), Gnosis (GNO) or Chainlink (LINK), there are deposit and wallet setup fees. For example, LINK has an address setup fee of 0.6 LINK and a deposit fee of 0.6 LINK, while GNO can be deposited for free, but has a GNO wallet fee of 0.07.

All selections are charged at Kraken. Withdrawal fees at the Kraken are not the lowest compared to other stock exchanges, but they are not expensive either. The price also depends on the cryptocurrency being downloaded.

Withdrawal fees and minimums for all cryptocurrencies in the Krakow can be found here.

Kraken also charges fees for fiat currencies. A standard USD transfer costs $ 5 per transaction, while a global SWIFT USD transaction comes with a $ 35 fee. Withdrawing EUR via SEPA costs EUR 0.09, while a worldwide SWIFT transfer via Etana Custody is also charged EUR 35. CAD, GBP, CHF and JPY withdrawals are also possible, but fees vary depending on the transaction method.

A complete list of all fiat currency selection fees can be found here.

Overall, Kraken's fees appear to be low, justified and reasonable. As such, the stock exchange falls on the cheaper end of regulated exchanges, although some of its functions may have slightly cheaper alternatives elsewhere.

Kraken tutorial

Overall, the platform's interface is easy to use and easy to navigate, so you can easily find what you're looking for.

Registration

You will need to create an account first. Fill in your e-mail address, username and password here. Remember that you should protect your account with the strongest possible password. You will also select the country in which you are located.

Then read and confirm the terms of use of the service. Then nothing prevents you from pressing "Create account". You'll find a message in your email with the code you enter on the account activation screen. If you have closed the registration tab, the activation link is in the email as well. Confirm the password.

Log in to the platform. Click on your username in the upper right corner. Now you need to go through at least a basic verification, so open "Get Verified". On the next page, select one of the verification levels and fill in the required data and documents. There are three levels of account authentication: Starter, Intermediate, and Pro.

Deposit

The next point is to invest in the stock market. This is an easy matter that does not require further comments, but we will talk about the possibilities and where to find them. On the main page, click on the "Funding" tab, which can be found on the top bar of the entire interface. You will be redirected to the next page, where you can switch between FIAT and cryptocurrencies at the top of the page.

Trading

In terms of stock market usability, the Kraken stock exchange is best suited for advanced and professional traders. Nevertheless, it works to improve its frontend and helps beginners to easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies, so you can now buy cryptocurrencies directly through its clear panel by clicking on the "New order" tab.

Here you can choose from two different ordering options: Simple and Advanced.

The Simple option is by far the easiest way to buy or sell your cryptocurrencies.

The Intermediate option allows you to enter more advanced features and order variables that match your business strategy.

In addition, seasoned traders can go to the Kraken Pro stock exchange for a more advanced trading view and features by pressing the chart button in the upper right corner. Here you can create a fully customizable panel based on your business techniques, strategies and technical analysis.

The exchange also offers futures trading, where you can trade with leverage up to 50 times. Futures trading is only available to authenticated users outside the US. Perpetual futures are available for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin and USD.

Users can use different types of orders to manage risks, such as limit orders, advanced orders with predefined triggers, leverage positions, margin trading. Kraken Futures also offers a demo account.

Kraken Earn

Staking

Kraken users have the added benefit of being able to stack their favorite coins to earn rewards. Staking allows investors to maximize their holdings of digital assets in Kraken's wallet and earn rewards for gradually increasing their portfolio.

Staking fees for individual coins vary between 0.25 % and 23 % per year. To get rewards, it's as easy as buying a backed asset and saving it in a Kraken wallet. There are currently no fees for betting or weaning.

Staking ETH allows the staker to act as a validator on the proof-of-stake Beacon Chain of Ethereum blockchain, supporting the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0. The stacked ETH cannot be canceled or transferred in the Ethereum network for an unknown period. This means that clients should only stack ETHs that they plan to hold for a long time.

Parachainy

Your Kraken account must be verified at an intermediate level in order to participate in parachain auctions. Parachain slot auctions allow the community to decide which projects to add to the Polkadot and Kusama networks.

In the auction, bidders vote for the project they want to succeed by locking their KSM in a project on the Kusama or DOT network in Polkadot. Projects with the largest number of locked tokens on their behalf will win a parachain slot for up to 48 weeks. Once the blocking period has expired, holders will also receive their tokens and admins.

Deposits and withdrawals Kraken

Kraken supports various deposit and withdrawal methods. These include cryptocurrency deposits and fiat currency deposits via bank transfer. There are no credit or debit card deposit options for instant cryptocurrency purchases.

Supported fiat deposit and bank transfer withdrawal options include:

FewWire / FewWire (Etana Administration) (1-5 business days)
SWIFT (2-5 business days)
Silvergate Exchange Network (almost instantaneous)
SEPA (Etana / Fidor / Bank Frick Report) (0-5 days)
InterFIn (0-10 min)
FPS / BACS (Clear Junction) (0-3 days)
CHAPS (same day)
SIC (almost immediately on working days during working hours)

Fees range from free to $ 50 or equivalent, depending on the method chosen. Fiat deposits and withdrawals are not available to users at the Starter authentication level.

Overview of other stock exchanges and exchange offices you will find here

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Safety

Kraken takes security very seriously and his wallets have never been hacked before. The platform has not worked only once - in January 2018 - since its launch in 2011, and even then it was due to the necessary system upgrades. It has a wide range of measures to reduce the risk of coin theft through its system:

• Transfer new deposits directly to offline "cold" wallets that are physically isolated from any online system.
• Storing a huge amount of coins in cold wallets, while online "hot" wallets store only the coins needed to maintain the liquidity of the Krakow.
• Storing a small number of coins in semi-cold wallets, which are stored on protected machines with locked disks.
• Encryption of all wallets and data in data centers.

These measures protect the Kraken platform itself from compromise by hackers, but the stock exchange also has the following features to protect individual accounts:

• Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) authentication, by far the most secure way to protect your account with hardware authentication devices such as YubiKey or its alternatives.
• Two-factor authentication that can be used for logins, transactions, financing, and API actions.
• Master account lock.
• Information leakage protection: (occasional) login and password recovery attempts will not reveal any account information or even the existence of an account.
• PGP / GPG encryption for emails.
• User authentication documents are uploaded to an isolated, highly secure system.
  All sensitive user data is encrypted and can only be decrypted by accessing multiple security systems at once.
• Global settings lock that can be activated to prevent user account information (such as a pick-up address) from being changed by a third party that has hacked into your account.

And if the above is not enough, Kraken is also taking a number of measures to ensure compliance, system security and financial security. These include maintaining full monetary reserves with cryptographically verifiable proof-of-reserves audits and daily data backup, all of which significantly reduce the risk of users losing money.

In addition to platform security, Kraken also conducts regular security audits when engaging new cryptocurrencies and crypto security devices such as hardware wallets.

The security practices of the Kraken Stock Exchange are widely recognized. Exchange Security Report 2.0 from ICO Rating lists Kraken as the safest stock exchange in the industry with an A score.

Overall, the security of the Kraken is as solid as a rock, the stock exchange's procedures are among the best in the industry. While this is not recommended, you should feel safe leaving your funds on the stock market.

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All content in this article is for informational purposes only and does not in any way serve as investment advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies, commodities and stocks is very risky and can lead to capital losses.