Crypto assets have become extremely popular due to the high numbers of investors, traders, and other market participants that are involved in this platform globally. We all know that with every passing day a new crypto technology has been launched but that is not it. There have been plenty of new trading venues and exchange platforms launching now and then.
The cryptocurrency exchange is just like the stock exchange platforms. These platforms work to facilitate purchasing, selling, and trading of digital assets by retail and also by large investors and traders.
Kraken is not the first crypto exchange platform for sure but it has managed to become one of the top-most platforms for crypto trading. Other than Kraken, people majorly use Binance, Gate.io, and Coinbase.
About Kraken
Kraken is based in San Francisco. People knew about the stock exchange and how they work and so it is not difficult for them to learn about a virtual stock exchange sort of a platform. The difference is this virtual platform deals in only crypto assets and not usual currencies.
In these crypto exchange platforms, people are allowed to purchase, sell or trade cryptocurrencies by using fiat currencies including dollars, Euros, and the Yen.
On the Kraken exchange platform, there is a variety of cryptocurrencies that also include the most popular ones like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and others that have become famous over time such as EOS and Monero.
A Little History
Kraken was created in the year 2011 and was officially launched in 2013. This platform is owned by Payward Inc. and its CEO, as well as co-founder, is Jesse Powell. This platform was developed to provide ease in trading crypto money to and from the connected bank accounts of the users. Also, the movement of cryptocurrencies to and from the user’s e-wallets from Kraken-linked trading accounts.
The Story behind Kraken’s Popularity
Since its official launch, a lot of aspects and factors have contributed to its historic popularity. Kraken became the preference of the majority of the cryptocurrency market when it came to choosing an ideal cryptocurrency exchange for crypto assets.
Kraken associated itself with the leading market data provider and helped majorly in getting popularity among the entire community of traders. After Bloomberg, Kraken partnered with TradingView, known as the global leader in chart-service providers. Later on, this platform unceasingly added new crypto assets such as Lumen and others to its trading platform and allowed funding and trading of plenty of fiat currencies including USD, GBP, and JPY.
The above details show a smooth launch of Kraken. Kraken did not stop there but stayed on the same track and made the headlines in the year 2014. This platform was chosen to support the investigation of missing Bitcoins and also in the distribution of remaining assets to Mt.Gox’s creditors. Mt.Gox used to be the largest bitcoin exchange platform but had some issues and was filed for insolvency in the initial days of 2014. It came out that this platform was facing issues with a huge debt and 850,000 missing bitcoins.
To this point, Kraken was not that famous and did not come on the list of largess exchange platforms. It only serves European customers via a partnership with a Germany-based bank, Fidor bank. Furthermore, it had just started serving in Japan.
All the Mt.Gox creditors who desired their lost bitcoin back were needed to open Kraken exchanger accounts and the majority of them continued to avail their services. All this led to a surge in the popularity of Kraken which became a popular and trustworthy platform for the exchange of assets.
In 2016, Kraken publicly announced that it was making huge progress in its Mt.Gox investigations. The growth of Kraken increased also due to new features that made crypto trading popular among the user community. The new features included the margin trading facility and the dark pool services.
The users that avail of dark pool services are considered eligible for potentially improved charges as they are facilitated to inconspicuously place big orders that are operated against similar-sized orders providing them price benefits.
Conclusion
In the way of all this success, Kraken has also hit a few roadblocks that led to a major loss for market users. In May of 2017, it was hit with Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) which caused it a huge loss. This all costs a lot to its image but it still managed to maintain its position among all the exchange platforms.
