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.
