Topic: [ANN] KRAKEN.COM - Exchange with USD EUR GBP JPY CAD BTC LTC XRP NMC XDG STR ETH - page 315. (Read 629033 times)

These currency codes, beginning with an X, are more consistent with ISO conventions than the current trend for BTC etc. In fact, BTC is reserved for Bhutan, IIRC. Codes beginning with X are more permissible for non-fiat and non-state-specific currencies, and thus perfect for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (XBT), ripple (XRP), ven (XVN), etc. Feel free to keep referring to bitcoin as BTC if it is more convenient, but if bitcoin is to be accepted properly it will be represented as XBT, and Kraken is simply trying to be proactive in this respect in order to be a more professional exchange.

signed up and logged in... I am/was excited to see an exchange based right here in the good'ol usa.....

However.

XBT  wtf?  is that BTC  ?

XRP.. really?  that is not even a currency

XVN...?? first i heard of this... just looked it up.... not peer to peer... oversight by HSBC... really?  wtf

Maybe here?
Do any banks offer SEPA-depositable accounts to US citizens?
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/do-any-banks-offer-sepa-depositable-accounts-to-us-citizens-88440

I've been using Kraken since October and I think its been great. The only thing I need to do now is find a friendly SEPA area bank that will allow non-residents to easily open a bank account to make inward and outward payments to Kraken easier. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to PM me or post here please, it would be a great help.

Thanks very much.

I believe the downtime was due to an upgrade to the API containing now price spread and other stuff. I don't have positive or negative opinion about it yet; it was 4-5 days since I signed and I got verified earlier than MtGox. I really look forward withdrawing some funds and make my first SEPA deposit to see how it behaves.

So far, so good.

I'm going to speak up for Kraken.
Today's been the first major stumble I've seen (and personally, it's been a real pain) but in terms of ease of use, depth of information, responsiveness of the site. It's rapidly become my favourite exchange.
Stuff happens, we understand, but do keep us informed better than happened today. I look forward to a bigger, better, stronger Kraken as a result.
But well done on what you've created.

Is the api turned off? Im getting 503's on the api but not on the use website.

edit: Nvm,  its up again

at the moment it's up again

Also, we are aware that customer support/verification is extremely slow right now. We've hired a small army of support/verification staff to resolve this issue, but as I've said before, it will take time before the new staff results in much faster response times. The reason for this is that the new staff need to be trained and this takes time - and when we take time to train staff, it's time that we would otherwise use to answer tickets. So, paradoxically, when you hire new staff, it actually slows you down for a while, and we are still in the stage where the training is slowing us down. The situation will get much better, but it will continue to be slow for a while before it gets better. 

Hi Everyone - we apologize for the long down time. The site was back up for me a little while ago, but it's down again at the present time. We are doing everything we can to get the site stable as soon as possible.

We did not have to install DDOS protection after the attack, but already had such protection in place. But DDOS protection is isn't infallible. A site can still go down even if good DDOS protection is in place. There are steps you can take once the attack is underway to mitigate the damage, but it can still take a long time before the site is stable again.

We can't realistically promise that this will never happen again. As I said, DDOS protection isn't infallible. We can promise we'll do a better job with communication next time, but keep in mind that when a DDOS attack hits, about all we can say is that we're under attack and are working hard to get the site back up as soon as we can. We can also promise that we'll look at what can be done to improve our DDOS protection.

Saying that the situation is "nothing serious" was an unfortunate choice of words. It is of course serious any time you don't have access to your account and aren't able to manage your trades. But what was meant is that it's nothing more serious that a DDOS attack - i.e. the site isn't compromised, just down due to the attack.  

Until the site is stable again, the status is that we're still under attack and doing everything we can to get it stable again.

They need to sort this DDOS and also start getting verifications processed.

DDOS was always going to be a potential issue.  Yet again with the Cloudfare, these guys are the real clowns - they cannot protect shit from DDOS.

Even before this though verification was becoming an issue.  What really irks me is that if Kraken do not have the staff to check docs then they should at least relax the checks until they do - say allow BTC withdrawals.  It should not be my problem that they have more verification requests then they can handle.

Also is anyone actually getting verified in the 'up to' 7 days or does everyone find it takes at least the full 7 days and a couple of emails to make it happen? 

Really going off Kraken which is sad as they had a nice site. 

Oh dear

And it's down again...

It was a DDOS attack and they had to install proper DDOS protection.

Quote from their facebook page:


I haven't lost my faith yet

API seems to be behind CloudFlare protection now, which passes my web browser but not my API clients :/

And the trade history clearly shows 8 hours worth of downtime (7 if we include the very limited avilability in the last hour).


Please explain how this was not a serious problem...

Till this day I had 0 problems with you and loved this site. I just want you to reasure me that stuff like this will not be happening again. Just a plain explanation please.

Thank you!

I can confirm it's down again at the moment.

hm.. some minutes it was online.. now down again.. ^^

The website is definitely up.

EDIT: Not anymore.

not for me (14:41 UTC)

edit1 14:52 UTC: after the usual cloudfare web browser check I've been albe to see the homepage again. let's if it works for real now...
edit2 15:05 UTC: I'm able to login. The only thing I've done so far is generating a new API key and it seems to work.