Kraken Exchange Review

Kraken – Is It Good?

Founded all the way back in 2011, Kraken is one of the oldest and best-established bitcoin exchanges still active out there. If you heard of them before you may have known about their stability issues with the site. However they’ve revamped their site and they’re now focusing on high security and good customer service. And if you’re looking for lower fees, Kraken has one of the lowest ones in the cryptocurrency world, especially for such a veteran, well established crypto exchange.

However their recent security downtime has worried some people in the past. In early 2018 a system upgrade that should’ve taken only two hours ended up paralyzing the website for over two days.

So how good is Kraken? Is Kraken trustworthy? How’s the user experience? And, most importantly, how does it stack up against other platforms?

What Does Kraken provide?

Based in San Francisco, Kraken wants to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrency, and they’ve been doing it for a long time. Satoshi first mined Bitcoin’s genesis block in 2009, two years later Kraken was founded, way before Bitcoin was mainstream. They’re definitely not a new shady page just looking to scam you.

When it first started it had some issues with instability in the platform. However, Kraken has managed to change their narrative by providing robust security and great customer service. It has raised over 100 million dollars and, when you take a peek behind the curtain, it’s easy to see why.

Kraken’s security is well above most cryptocurrency exchanges. They keep 95% of coins in cold storage geographically distributed and have high liquidity which allows you to withdraw immediately. Their servers are under strict armed security and your information is encrypted. They even have a team dedicated to try and penetrate their security to find possible weak links.

They also provide you with great security features such as 2FA, SSL encryption, email confirmations for every movement and live chat available all day, every day. They’ve really gone all in when it comes to security and customer service.

And if you thought that all that security would translate in bothersome navigation, you couldn’t be more wrong. They’ve actually managed to keep their interface simple and easy to navigate although some beginners may have a hard time using it if they’ve never traded before.

And although they don’t have every single alt-coin out there, their repertoire is quite decent with alt-coins like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, Dash, Ripple, Litecoin and even Dogecoin available for their users.

Supported Countries

Kraken has a great reach providing worldwide support including the United States. They aren’t available only in the usual countries, those being Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Japan, North Korea and Tajikistan.

They also not provide services for citizens of Washington and New York.

Kraken Rates and Buying Limits

Besides their longevity, Kraken is also well known for their low trading fees. Despite being amongst the largest platforms out there, they’ve managed to have some of the lowest fees in the market. Even for people trading up to $50,000 dollars a month getting the highest fees (which are most of us), they’ll only have to pay the following:

Kraken fee: 0.16%

That’s a low fee, especially if you consider that that’s their highest fee in their table. You can check it out on the Kraken site.

Kraken’s buying limits are tied to their verification system with four tiers. Users from the Tier 3 can deposit up to $25,000 daily and $200,000 monthly. Users in Tier 4 have their limits established with the help of Kraken directly to better fit their needs and can be individuals or corporations.

Kraken Cons

• Not for beginners: Beginners may find intimidating to trade in Kraken since it’s focused more to experienced buyers.
• No card payment support: Kraken doesn’t provide support for credit cards, debit cards or PayPal.

Go to Kraken

Is Kraken Good For Bitcoin?

Kraken is a great bitcoin exchange platform for anyone who knows how to trade already and is looking for a well-established platform. Their fees are highly competitive and their security is top notch. It’s worth noting that the two day downtime that we mentioned at the beginning ended up with Kraken giving free trading to all of its users until the end of the year. That was almost 10 months of free trading as an apology!

Kraken is a trustworthy site and, although they still have some room to improve in the user experience department, it remains one of the best options to trade cryptocurrency out there.