Kraken exchange is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, founded in 2011. Kraken is an international cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, USA.
In this article we will check out together:
- Kraken exchange review
- Kraken website review
- Who are the founders and management team of Kraken?
- Kraken exchange facilities
- Kraken exchange security review
- Authentication system in Kraken
- Frequently Asked Questions
Kraken exchange review
First of all, we remind you that the Kraken exchange is an international exchange. Some people may have the impression that because Kraken’s headquarters is located in the United States, other countries are not allowed to use this exchange.
But it is true. Of course, Kraken has established rules for every country, and even in the United States, some states such as Washington DC cannot use it.
Since the list of countries is too long and cannot be included in this article, you can refer to this link and read the list of these countries and their laws (which are allowed to use Kraken or not).
Before continuing the article, we need to take a look at Kraken’s website traffic statistics. On the Similarweb website, we can see that most of the visitors to the Kraken site are from the United States, followed by Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands.
Kraken website review
When we log in to Kraken.com, we will be faced with the screen you see above. On the right side, we see the Kraken mobile application, which is available for both Android and IOS. At the top of the page, you can also see the features and services of Kraken, which we will introduce later.
A little lower, we see information about this exchange. It is written here that more than 9 million customers from about 190 countries are active in Kraken. Kraken’s quarterly trading volume is also reported to be around 207 billion dollars.
Going down again, we reach the Staking section of Kraken. By staking more than 10 cryptocurrencies, you can earn from 2 to 22% (depending on the desired cryptocurrency and the duration of the asset lock) annual profit.
In the continuation of the main page of the Kraken wesite, the various types of trading markets of this exchange have been introduced. In the Kraken exchange, users can make professional or Pro transactions (types of orders), margin and futures.
At the bottom of the site page, we can see different sections and social pages of Kraken.
Some features and services that are rarely seen in digital currency exchanges, but Kraken offers them, are:
- Account Management: Dedicated and personalized support for professional traders.
- Bug Bounty: If users see bugs and problems in this exchange, they can report them to the Kraken team, and if these bugs are fundamental and destructive, they can receive rewards from the exchange.
- PGP encryption: sending encrypted emails as PGP or Pretty Good Privacy, in order to keep users more secure.
- Participating in Polkadat parachain auctions: You can participate in the parachain auction directly through the Kraken exchange.
Who are the founders and management team of Kraken?
The thing that is important about exchanges, especially old and well-known exchanges, is knowing their management team. In the Why Kraken section, we only see the name of Jesse Powell, the founder of this exchange.
Searching on Comparably found the names of Kraken’s management team as following:
- Kaiser NG: Chief Financial Officer.
- David Ripley: Chief Operating Officer.
- Steve Hunt: Vice President of Engineering.
- Craig Stoe: Vice President of Product Management.
- Christina Yee: Chief Brand Manager.
- Marco Santori: Chief Legal Officer.
- Robert Zagotta: Chief Commercial Officer.
Kraken exchange facilities
Kraken exchange has made it possible to trade in spot, margin with leverage up to 5 times, futures and OTC markets. You can see the transaction fees in these markets in this link. Also, Kraken has several different markets in the futures sector.
Single-Collateral Perpetual, Single-Collateral Fixed Maturity and Multi-Collateral Perpetual Linear transactions, the amount of margin required for transactions and the amount of leverage you can use, in each It is different and depends on the level and volume of your transactions. You can check this information in this link.
Also, this exchange offers other facilities such as staking, NFT market, training in the form of articles, videos and podcasts and various types of transactions for institutional investors. In addition, users can benefit from the 24-hour support of this exchange.
Kraken exchange security review
Kraken’s motto is to protect assets, NFTs and provide security for users. Of course, this security is not only in terms of theft and hacking.
Moreover, providing financial stability and having financial support, healthy banking connections and legal standards are also among the security issues.
According to Kraken, all deposited assets are kept offline and in several cold wallets, the servers of this exchange are monitored 24 hours a day by cameras and guards, all the sensitive information of user accounts are encrypted, and a professional team has been assigned to test the systems of this exchange to Check and test the possibility of any attack.
Kraken also has a Bug Bounty program, where users report bugs and errors to the Kraken team.
Among the other security measures this exchange has considered for user accounts are the following:
- Two-factor authentication (2FA): Two-factor authentication is performed using the Google Authenticator application or Yubikey hardware for greater account security.
- Asset withdrawal emails using Self-Serve Account Lock.
- Customizable API key permissions.
- Send PGP encrypted emails to users for added security.
- Continuous and real-time monitoring to prevent suspicious activities.
- Encrypt sensitive information.
- Configurable account locking: you can set a time to lock your account; For example, determine that if you do not use your account for 6 hours, your account will be locked. To open it, you need to enter your login username and password again.
- Using SSL encryption on the exchange site.
- Chat and email support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Authentication system in Kraken
To perform KYC on Kraken exchange, two conditions are necessary: you are over 18 years old and the country where you reside is not among the sanctioned areas. You can see the list of countries in this link. Select the desired country, and Kraken will show you whether you can use its services or not.
There are two levels of authentication in this exchange. Starter and Express. Of course, there are two other levels called Intermediate and Pro, which require more documents like proof of address.
The deposit and withdrawal limits for each of these levels are shown in the following table:
Cryptocurrency deposit is not limited for all levels, daily withdrawal is $5,000 for Starter, $500,000 for Intermediate and $10,000,000 for Pro. Express level is only for US citizens and its conditions are different from other levels.
At the beginning of creating a new account, you provide information such as email address, first and last name, date of birth and address (no need for proof) to the exchange, and after being approved, you will be upgraded to the Starter level.
To upgrade to higher levels, you need to provide additional documents such as passport photo and home address (with proof of address), which is not possible for Iranian users. You can see the benefits and services of each level in the table below.
As you can see, the amount of deposit to the exchange has no limits for any of the levels. But there are limits for withdrawal and some services.
For example, trading on the Kraken Futures market is not available for the starter level, and you must perform a higher level authentication.
OTC trading is also only available for Pro level users. Some other services for each of these levels are listed in the following table:
- Enabling security features and using the Kraken professional application is active for all levels.
- Using the Kraken application for trading is active for all levels except the starter.
- Cryptocurrency deposit has no limit.
- Crypto withdrawals have limits for each level as you can see in the previous table.
- Using the Bitcoin Lightning network is only possible for Intermediate and Pro levels.
- Depositing and withdrawing fiat money has limits for each level.
- Exchange of assets is not limited.
- Staking is done as such for the starter level and can be done both on-chain and off-chain for intermediate and pro levels.
- Margin trading is active for Intermediate and Pro levels. Of course, there are also special conditions that you can read in this link.
- Trading in Dark Pool is allowed only for Pro level users (this service is currently disabled).
- Futures trading is available for Intermediate and Pro users.
- OTC trading is only possible for Pro users.
- Only Intermediate and Pro users are allowed to participate in Polkadat parachain auctions.
- Business account is opened for people who have Pro level authentication.
- Users of the first three levels can receive 16 API keys from Kraken, and the Pro level can receive up to 25 keys.
- API call rate ranges are low for the two beginner levels, high for the Intermediate level, and highest for the Pro level. API Call Rate Limits means the number of API calls, which an application or user can make in a given time period.
Frequently Asked Questions
In which country is Kraken exchange?
Kraken is an international cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, USA. Therefore, it follows the American laws.
How to register in Kraken exchange?
You can create an account on Kraken by providing information such as your email, first and last name, and date of birth.
But in order to use more and more professional services of this exchange, such as margin and futures transactions, you must upgrade your authentication to higher levels by sending identification documents, including passports.
Authentication in Kraken exchange has 4 different levels, each of which has restrictions.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Kraken exchange?
This exchange has a very high level of security and a professional team maintains the security of Kraken around the clock. There are also many security features for users, who can keep themselves safe by activating them.
One of the disadvantages of this exchange is not introducing the management team on its site. Also, at first glance, working with the Kraken exchange may seem a bit complicated.