Kraken is one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. In our review you will learn how to work with Kraken, how to trade on this exchange, how to deposit and withdraw funds, how much the fees are, and what other features they provide on their platform for traders.
General information about the exchange
Kraken is considered to be the largest exchange, according to a study in June 2020. The crypto exchange was founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell. The platform is registered in the United States as Payward, Inc and was officially launched in 2013.
The headquarters is located in San Francisco. In addition, the exchange has offices in various cities around the world, including London, Chiyoda (Japan) and Singapore. Kraken has raised over $ 126 million in venture capital, according to Craft.co. Due to this market has acquired a number of crypto-oriented start-ups, such as CryptoWatch, Coinsetter, CleverCoin, Cavirter, Crypto Facilities, Bit Trade and InterChange.
Kraken is a self-regulatory exchange, that is, it develops its own security policy and operating rules. However, it is compliant with rules and regulations in many supported jurisdictions. It is registered as a Money Services Business Unit (MSB) with FinCEN in the US and FINTRAC in Canada. Kraken Futures is regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority.
By 2014, Kraken held the leading position in the euro / bitcoin trading pair. In 2015, the exchange added the ability to buy Ethereum and ranked second in the world for BTC / ETH exchange. The exchange serves 4 million customers in two hundred countries.
Supported currencies:
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, DASH and others. It also supports fiat currencies: CAD, EUR, GBP, JPY and USD.
Fiat payments are made via bank transfer. For users with a bank account in the European Union, SEPA payment system is also supported.
Kraken Significant events over the past few years:
- in 2018, the margin trading function appeared.
- at the beginning of 2019, futures trading became available;
- in 2019, a rebranding was carried out, in particular, the website design was updated;
- in 2019, a new Kraken Futures mobile application for crypto trading from mobile devices appeared (available in the AppStore and Google Play);
- In November 2019, Kraken joined the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), a proprietary internal payment platform developed by Silvergate Bank. Provides fast transfers between account holders of this bank;
- in November 2019, an affiliate program appeared on the exchange: 20% of income for attracting new customers to the exchange;
- new crypto and fiat currencies are added, of the latest – Orchid (OXT) (06/02/2020), USDT-ERC20 (06/02/2020), Tron (TRX) (03/05/2020), USD Coin (USDC) (01/08/2020) ;
- new trading pairs appeared: on April 30, 2020, the exchange announced on its blog the appearance of 11 pairs: LTC/ETH, BCH/ETH, XRP/ETH, BCH/GBP, LTC/USDT, BCH/USDT and others.
Registration on the exchange
The official website of the exchange has been translated into 12 languages. It will take no more than 3 minutes to create an account. Open the main page. In the upper right corner, click the “Create an account” button.
Enter your email address, come up with a username, password. Select your country of residence.
The username must be unique. Do not match already registered in the system.
Read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and check the box “I Agree”. Click “Create Account”.
The system will open the account activation page. Enter your username, password and activation key on it. You can find the latest data in the message that the exchange will send to the email address. Next, click “Activate Account”.
You can also activate your account using the automatic activation link that Kraken will send by email.
How to get verified
To trade on Kraken, you need a Basic Level Confirmation. To open a basic account, users must provide their full name, date of birth, residential address, e-mail and phone number. In the upper right corner, click on your account icon. In the menu that opens, select “Verification”.
Tap “Verification” under the description of the “Basic” level. On the page that opens, enter the following information about yourself:
FULL NAME;
full address of the place of residence;
phone number;
date of birth.
Now click on the “Submit” button.
For the middle type of account, you need to indicate your occupation, upload an identity document and confirm your residential address.
Pro Account requires financial reporting and AML (Anti Money Laundering) verification.
If you applied for a basic account, verification is done automatically. This can usually take less than an hour. Subsequent levels require manual verification by the Kraken team. According to them, it can take from 1 to 5 days.
Security
Kraken is one of the safest online cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The exchange offers users two-factor authentication (2FA), PGP encryption, and global settings lock, which prevents any account changes over a specified period of time.
Throughout its existence, Kraken has not been hacked, but there have been cases when the accounts of unwary users have been hacked due to the lack of 2FA security.
Security settings are made through the “Security” menu item.
Global Settings Lock (GSL) is enabled in the “Settings” – “Account” section.
How to deposit and withdraw money
Go to the “Transfers” section in the upper “Menu” tab. Next to each available cryptocurrency and fiat currency, there are buttons with which you can make deposits and withdrawals: “Deposit”, “Withdrawal”.
Kraken supports a variety of deposit and withdrawal methods. These include deposits in cryptocurrency using various crypto wallets and money transfers via bank transfer. Deposit / withdrawal via bank cards is not available.
Supported bank transfer and deposit options include:
- FewWire / FewWire (Etana Custody) (1-5 business days);
- SWIFT (2-5 business days);
- Silvergate exchange network (almost instantaneous);
- SEPA (0-5 days);
- other.
The size of the commission varies from $ 0 to $ 50, depending on the chosen method.
Fiat deposits and withdrawals are not available to users at the “basic” checkout level.
How to trade on Kraken.com
More than 100 trading pairs are available for trading on the exchange. 40 percent of all transactions are in the BTC / USD pair.
Algorithm for buying or selling cryptocurrency on the exchange:
- Go to the “Trades” tab in the top menu.
- Click on “New order”.
- Select the deal mode.
- Choose a trading pair, for example BTC / USD.
- Choose an action: buy or sell.
- Enter the requested trade data depending on the selected mode and order.
- Confirm the trade by clicking the green Buy or the red Sell button.
There are several types of orders on the exchange:
Market
Designed to be executed immediately. In essence, this is an exchange at the current market price.
Limit
Allows the trader to carry out a buy / sell transaction at the price that he sets himself. The order is executed only when there is an offer on the market that matches the user’s request. It may take a considerable period of time.
Advanced orders (stop loss, take profit, stop loss limit, take profit limit)
Allows the trader to carry out a buy / sell transaction at the price that he sets himself. The order is executed only when there is an offer on the market that matches the user’s request. It may take a considerable period of time.
Trading mode settings are also available:
Easy
Adjusted only the price or the number of coins and type of order – a limit or market.
Medium
Configurable price or number of coins, order type, leverage, transaction time, commission currency
Difficult
Additional types of advanced orders and their settings are added
For medium and difficult modes, there is the possibility of margin trading – trading with leverage up to x5. The exchange lends the user a certain amount of funds in relation to his balance. For example, if a trader creates a deal to buy 1 bitcoin and selects a 3x leverage, then he will trade 3 coins (1 user and 2 from the exchange). In this case, the profit from the trade triples, but so does the loss. A trader can lose no more than there is on the balance sheet. Not recommended for inexperienced traders and beginners.
How to lower your fees
Kraken provides guidance on the structure of trading fees. Most transactions with a volume of less than 50,000 units of a particular currency are subject to a 0.16% seller fee and a 0.26% buyer fee. These fees are charged for all Bitcoin trades made through USD, EUR, JPY GBP and CAD. The same fee structure applies to most altcoin trading pairs.
For traded volumes in excess of 50,000 units, commissions are reduced to 0.14% and 0.24%. As the volume of trading increases, the commission rate steadily decreases to 0% for the seller and 0.10% for the buyer. Fees are charged on a per-trade basis and trade volumes are calculated for trades completed within a 30-day period.
Commission for other operations:
Futures Fees
0.020% – for the seller;
0.075% – for buyers
Margin trading
for opening – 0.01% -0.02%
for renewal for every 4 hours – 0.01% -0.02%
For deposits and withdrawals
balance top-ups are free for most cryptocurrencies. For Augur (REP), Gnosis (GNO) or Chainlink (LINK), there are deposit fees. For example, LINK has a 0.6 LINK wallet creation fee and a 0.6 LINK deposit fee. For GNO, the wallet fee is 0.07 GNO.
Trading in the Dark Pool
available for Ethereum / Fiat and Bitcoin / Fiat currency pairs;
for such transactions, the company promises a low percentage of fees for both the seller and the buyer
Trading in the Dark Pool involves placing anonymous trades that are not visible to the rest of the market. This is done for large transactions so that they do not affect the state of the market.
Support service 24/7 and account manager
Kraken offers 24/7 support with 24/7 email responses and 1 hour live chat responses.
For advanced traders who are constantly trading on the exchange, an “exclusive level of personalized support, almost in real time, through the Kraken Account Management program” becomes available. Each user is assigned a personal manager who can be contacted on any issue in any convenient way:
- e-mail;
- phone;
- chat;
- any messenger.
Additional features of the exchange
OTC trade
The company provides off-exchange trading opportunities. It looks as if the company’s employees are intermediary agents in the transaction with the cryptocurrency.
First, you need to become an OTC customer by sending an application to [email protected]. The condition is the verification level Pro.
Contact the OTS department and express your intention to complete the transaction. For example, “I want to buy 10 bitcoins.”
The department selects suitable offers and offers, for example, to buy 10 bitcoins at a cost of $ 8000 for 1 BTC.
If the client is satisfied with the price, he confirms the deal.
Further, through the agent and the OTC bank account, settlements between the buyer and the seller take place.
The minimum transaction size for an OTC trade is $ 100,000.
Cryptowatch
A trading terminal that provides real-time cryptocurrency market data, charts and trading services for more than 25 cryptocurrency exchanges.
Free tools:
- graphical interface for visualizing price movements and analyzing market trends;
- moving averages, MACD, RSI and Bollinger bands;
- the ability to view your balances across multiple exchanges in real time;
- setting price and volume alerts on your charts.
Paid tools:
- trading on several exchanges from one terminal;
- viewing your trading history and deals;
- chat with other traders.
Futures trading
In February 2019, Kraken acquired Crypto Facilities and became the first crypto exchange to offer digital currency futures trading to users.
Unlike standard Kraken margin trading, futures trading tools allow you to trade up to 50x leverage on specific cryptocurrency pairs.
Futures are based on the future price of an asset. The parties conclude in advance an agreement to buy or sell a coin at a later date at a fixed price.
Futures trading is carried out through the Kraken Futures platform.
Staking
There is an unusual way of making money on staking on the Kraken exchange. It is something like a bank deposit. The user buys special staking coins from the available list or deposits them into an account and receives a reward for keeping them on this account twice a week. The amount of earnings is 6% per annum.
While coins are staking, they are not available for trading or withdrawal. However, you can instantly unlock them at any time. Deposit rewards are paid every week on Monday and Thursday at 14:00 UTC.
Only Tezos (XTZ) coins are available for staking. In the near future, it is planned to expand the list with other currencies such as Dash (DASH) and Cosmos (ATOM).
You can try this method of making money on cryptocurrency and learn more about it in the “Staking” tab, which is located in the top menu of the exchange website.
Reviews
- variety of currencies and tokens;
- the possibility of margin trading;
- high level of security and availability of 2FA;
- mobile trading;
- good trading conditions;
- division of the commission between the parties to the transaction.
- Among the shortcomings, the platform is oriented towards the West, which is reflected in the inability to work on the exchange using the usual payment systems.
trustpilot.com/review/kraken.com note that Kraken showcases “amazing product and great customer service.” Many people note the user-friendly interface, honest and transparent policy of the platform, responsive tech. support.
Among the shortcomings, users note a large number of checks and high commissions.
Conclusion
From the very beginning, Kraken has earned a reputation as a safe and professional exchange with a large arsenal of additional options: margin trading, futures trading, OTC trading.
The level of available instruments and limits depends on the level of user verification, of which there are 3: basic, standard and PRO. Having the first level, which is very easy to get, it becomes possible to carry out trading operations with tokens. However, work with fiat and futures remains unavailable. To do this, you will have to get the “standard” level and provide the exchange with documents proving your identity and place of residence.