Kraken: Incompetence or Manipulation?
Kraken is one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges out there. Over the past year or so their service has been very disappointing and to a great extent suspicious. One could argue that the reason is increased traffic from recent popularity but I simply do not buy that. Binance, one of the latest exchanges to be added to the scene is only a few months old yet is currently handling 5 times more volume than Kraken. It does so flawlessly. With Kraken every mouse click results to an error message.
Their twitter page is filled with complaints. People are suing left and right complaining about their loss of money. The scandals and allegations are much similar with ones Bitfinex is accused. The only difference with Kraken is that their site's dysfunctionality seems intentional.
First, the prices in Kraken are always vastly different on the...cheaper site of things. This can be explained by low demand and lack of liquidity but this has always been a case with Kraken. Trying to close a short, or even withdraw is impossible. Attempting to buy something takes forever. One has to do the action 10-15 times before it goes through. During that time (I believe) the bots have plenty of time to play arbitrage not only within the Kraken but across exchanges. They are making money out of their sites malfunction and in case they get sued they can simply covered it up with the "technical issue" excuse.
Mt. Gox tried to pull something similar but failed. Bitfinex never gave a detailed explanation in regards to the hack. I believe centralised exchanges will become obsolete in the very near future due to the mystery and fraud that surrounds most of them. It is only a matter of time until one (or even several of them) blow up in the faces of those who administer them. Much like with ico's in 2017, we will see many people end up in jail. Decentralisation might be the future but unreasonable greed will always be with us.
It is at this moment that I believe decentralised exchanges like 0x, bitshares and OAX are the future. Most of the problems we face today in crypto (and in the world in general) are caused due to lack of sufficient technology. There is nothing really we can do this far other than invest in the solutions that will safeguard our future. As cryptocurrencies become more and more popular decentralised exchanges will become vital for the stability of the entire system. Kraken and Mt. Gox's will remain in history as dark pages of the early crypto evolution.
I agree, almost everyday it has issues
Olympic front running? So we're still in the Wild West days... Well, even when you're a coin exchange operator, you don't want your child to be the poorest in Eaton
"I believe centralised exchanges will become obsolete in the very near future due to the mystery and fraud that surrounds most of them."
This, couldn't agree more!
I learned early to stay away from centralized exchanges - through bitter experience (mt.gox related). But I guess each new wave of crypto adopters is going to have to learn that for themselves by getting burned (at least until decentralized exchanges become as easy to use as the centralized ones - everyone wants easy).
That being said, if you are new to crypto and want safety over ease of use (for now), come to bitshares. You won't regret having gotten there before the masses. In fact, by this time next year you will be absolutely thrilled that you had made that choice!
why bitshares
do you think the exchanges could be down because btc transactions are backed up? do you think the btc blockchain is having issues dealing with the new volume?
Well, for a starter, bitshares is a graphene technology chain (like Steem) and can handle the transactions per second requirements of global business. No other (de-centralized) chain that I know of can.
A big concern also is all the projects that are going to be hit by regulators in the coming year. Bitshares has been determined to pass the test that it is NOT a security.
And as fiat currencies fail, and they will - the petro dollar is doomed, and the ico mania ( just like the dot com tech bubble) of this year fizzles out, the flight to safety will be to the smart coins on the bitshares chain. Other supposedly pegged assets are backed by nothing.
There are many other reasons. It is well worth your time to do some research.
Thanks this is helpful, I don't understand what you mean by graphene technology chain? I thought grephene was a molecule not a type of program? I must be behind.
What are the smart currencies on bitshares do you think? I'm looking for something to move some of my steem into.
Cool read. rt ✅
I noticed it yesterday as well... I'm glad I didn't move anything there. At the time I was ready to go with it. Really kind-of shakes the boots a little and make you wonder.
Kraken are busy trying to install an upgrade to look like Gdax (I saw preview)
Maybe this is the day they decided to go live and are having problems launching. (just guessing)
I use it all the time as It's my favourite exchange, but last few days it's been down more than up and now it's down, down.
Kraken are not going anywhere so do not worry.
i think its happened due to huge load of cryptocurency now a days.
It looks like the same issue on CoinBase and many others: I would say both incompetence and manipulation.
For instance, they do not disclose how the queue and the matching algorithm for the market is implemented, most of the profits are performed at this level, while even charging you little to no fees.
Is there any decentralized exchange that can handle fiat currency ?
I agree, almost everyday it has issue
I've been trying for DAYS to log on that pos. And when I could (last week) I couldn't place a damn order. Always giving me errors and shit.