Kraken is back! I mean that both in the literal sense and the sense that it's working more smoothly than I've ever seen it work before, even when it was a functional platform a year ago.
There are some hiccups. Trading is disabled intermittently as they sort out some bugs in the systems, but the funds are secure and nothing seems obviously out of place. The fact that trading fees are waived for the rest of the month, and the excited influx of activity currently makes for some easy money; though traders be warned, there's no absolute guarantee of stability after a major update that had so many problems. The more cautious trader would do well to wait a day or two for the system to prove itself.
Still, I'm VERY happy with the results so far. In my opinion Kraken is the best system to use for my purposes once Margin trading is made available again (their announcement here explains that margin will be unavailable for at lest 24 hours, as it should be when the system is still not fully proven).
I wish they had a referral program; I'd absolutely recommend jumping on board. They're likely wiser for this terrible experience and have an idea of how many users they can support until they need to close applications and prepare for another upgrade. Once people cool their heads I don't doubt there will be a renewed interest in the platform.
I may do a proper review after things settle, but for now this ends my series covering the crazy situations of Kraken's update from hell. Thanks for reading and here's to a new era of trading on a hopefully once-again amazing platform.
If you're looking for a reliable platform right now I do have a couple of other 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%.
NOTE: Checked the terms of use and Quadriga is not available to US residence. That's the only specific restriction for some reason. Sorry my American friends.
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.
If you're feeling generous today and would like to help out a poor, down on his luck writer you can help me buy a tiny violin to play a very sad song by donating:
Bitcoin: 3AB1rgRR3gTDZrZjG87mN9w9mSJRNaADH8
Ethereum: 0x2B3B2352760d1fbdC77db9494778457400811a15
https://streamlabs.com/johnyliltoe (I do live streams over on my YouTube channel and DLive, so I set this up)
Whoever you are out there, wherever you may be and whatever you may be doing I hope you're having a fantastic week!