Kraken's Maintenance Downtime Approaches 24 Hours
Kraken, a once semi-respectable coin exchange turned trading nightmare due to severe performance issues, has been undergoing a major downtime since 5:00 UTC. Given their latest update they're likely to be down at least 24 hours during a rather volatile moment in the coin market.
"Update - Inching our way to the finish line over here, devs mainlining coffee. Funds are all secure and protracted downtime has nothing to do with funding/reserves. Yes, this is our new record for downtime since we launched in 2013. No, we're not proud of it. Working hard to ensure that when we come back online things are running as smoothly and safely as possible. We'll give you another update in a few hours or as soon as we have something new to report.
Jan 12, 00:43 UTC"
The update was meant to take 2-3 hours but they've apparently run into some snags. With any other exchange I'd feel sorry for the team, but given how poorly they have handled their downtime issues up to this point and how long it's taken to seriously address them this seems pretty par-for-course.
There are several rumors flying around about Kraken being hacked. I've searched around a bit and none of this seems at all credible, so it's best to assume that the origin of these accusations are from a troll. Not that a 24 hour downtime isn't pretty disappointing in itself, but at least Kraken has acknowledged how embarrassing this is in their last update. I've never seen them admit to guilt like this in the past despite it being very warranted at times.
So what does this mean for Kraken? Well, this will likely result in several users running for the hills as I'm sure every catastrophic failure they've made has. It was a dying exchange already though, and they have made some improvements to performance over the past few weeks so it's entirely possible that this update is what brings it back to being a functional, reliable exchange.
But with all these issues why would anyone have stuck with them this long? For me it's the margin trading. Kraken offers up to 5x trading on margin. Risky business, but if you're adept at reacting to the market it can be quite profitable. A functioning system that doesn't fail when you have an open order will make this very appealing to some daytraders like myself. Some may also be holdouts from when Kraken felt like a more professional platform with a number of bells and whistles like stop-loss orders (temporarily removed for performance issues) and the ability to make orders conditional on the closing of another order (still available today). Their tiered fees are also quite competitive. I currently get charged 0.02% for maker orders and 0.12% for taker orders after a month of moderate day trading.
So if they clean up their mess Kraken may yet be worth taking a second look at. If you're looking for a more reliable platform right now I do have a couple of suggestions (because they offer referral links and I'm totally willing to be a sellout for a good product).
QuadrigaCX
https://www.quadrigacx.com/?ref=oohvdrx6yh6pl6s5b4f242rg
Canadian based QuadrigaCX is perfect for beginners in North America. It was my first exchange. It offers a very simple trading platform that shows live offers. Clicking on an offer allows you to autimatically fill out your trade order for a faster trading experience. Being a smaller (and competent) exchange they handle orders pretty much instantly. They trade in BTC, LTC, ETH, CAD and USD. Trading fees are at 0.5%.
Binance
https://www.binance.com/?ref=17951538
So anyone that's taken the time to look into exchanges probably knows about the giant that is Binance. They offer crypto trading only, but have a pretty wide variety. I use them mostly for long term investments. Diversify my portfolio with whatever I don't want to use daytrading and hope that my picks do well over time. If you're looking for a diverse coin portfolio, as any good trader should, you could do much worse than signing up to Binance.
Thanks for reading! I'm somewhat new to the crypto news scene, but since I've been using Kraken for quite awhile I figured I'd dip my toe in the pool for this one. Any feedback or questions you may have please stick them down in the comments and I'll be sure to reply.
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