Topic: [ANN] KRAKEN.COM - Exchange with USD EUR GBP JPY CAD BTC LTC XRP NMC XDG STR ETH - page 344. (Read 628584 times)

See "Understanding Leverage and Margin" in our Trading Guide - https://www.kraken.com/help/trading-guide#understanding-leverage-and-margin

The basic idea is that we will liquidate positions well before a user reaches the point that they owe us any money. (Edit: That is, well before the user's losses got to the point that the value of their positions (and account balance) was less than the amount they owed us and their positions couldn't be liquidated to fully pay their debt to us.) This is the purpose of the "Margin Call Level" and the "Margin Liquidation Level". Before anyone starts trading on margin, they should carefully read this section of the Trading Guide and make sure they understand the risks of margin trading.  


We can't use customer funds for our own operations, so if we couldn't continue to fund our operations, we would wind down trading and return funds to customers.

From https://www.kraken.com/security/practices (under "Financial Security"):

• Customer funds reside in a bank account separate from our operations account, and fees are transferred on a daily basis.
• Customer funds cannot be borrowed to fund operations, nor can they be lent, even for margin trading on our own platform.

Thanks for the questions RationalSpeculator.

Yes, there would always be buyers or sellers at unfavorable prices, and this means you might have trouble selling or buying without a lot of slippage from the present market price for larger orders. The role of the market maker is to provide liquidity or volume closer to current market prices than would otherwise be possible, so you can sell or buy with more volume and less slippage in price.

This is just a basic sketch, but market makers make their money in the spread. For example, a market maker (MM) might be buying bitcoins for $100 and selling them for $102. The MM is making $2 for every coin, and with heavy volume this can add up quickly. This doesn't mean that the MM is always making money. If suddenly the MM can't find any buyers for the coins bought at $100, the MM might have to sell them at a lower price. In that situation, the MM would take the loss on those coins, but set up shop with a spread around a lower price (say buying at $96 and selling at $98). With skill and proper risk management, the MM can avoid heavy losses and turn a profit in the long run. And the MM is providing a helpful service for other market participants by providing liquidity. 

Here's the Investopedia entry for market making, which has a little video that runs through the basics.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketmaker.asp

Yes - we hope to have the compliance for Germany finalized within a few weeks, but it's another situation where the progress is in the hands of others at the moment, so we don't have control over how long it takes.

Regarding your last point, Kraken has stated they are in for 'over 7 figures' -- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3126507

I don't understand how a market maker would operate?

The necessity for a market maker seems to be build on a false premise that there are not always users willing to buy or sell. This is never true, there are always users that want to buy from or sell to you, just not for the price that you like.  

So you don't like the price...

How can a market maker change that?

How can a market maker buy or sell bitcoins for the price that you like (which is always a better price than the users are willing to offer)?

Let's say he always puts up the most competitive bids and asks. 

From what I see when the price goes up he would end up selling btc cheaper as he can buy them back, going broke. Correct?




How will Kraken protect themselves from default when offering margin?

While we are at it, what's the current financial strength of Kraken before going broke? I'm asking as to estimate how safe funds are with you.

Digital Currency I believe

[...]
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Can someone explain what 'DC' stands for?

I made the steps for tier 2 a week ago. But it's still "Pre-Verified".
So it means, that u don't have clearance for germany?

Edit:
ah sry , I see

So I have to wait, correct?

NP, thanks for signing up! CDN could happen any day, but unfortunately we don't have a definite date. We're waiting on others at this point, so it's not something we have control over. Hopefully no more than a few weeks though.

Level 3 verified TY - any update on CDN$$$?

Update: We're pretty well caught up with verification. If you're still waiting on verification, check the email associated with your account to see if we've contacted you about it. If we haven't contacted you, then contact us through support. We're pretty sure we've contacted everybody, but in case we missed someone, please let us know. 

Update: If you are still eagerly waiting for tier 1, 2, or 3 verification, the speediest solution at this point might be to contact us through support. We will be contacting people we need further information from, but this will take some time as each case is different.

Here are some tips for getting through the verification process smoothly.

Tier 2 (Address verification):

• Take some time to find out what the standard international format for your address is. The best way to do this is to consult with your national post office, or (maybe not as good, but easier) consult an online search engine such as Google.
• Abbreviations tend to be problematic (i.e. "Strada" is preferable to "Str.")
• Double-check your spelling, and entertain the possibility that things like your street name may have alternate spellings that are more recognized internationally (again, your post office or Google might help here).

 

Tier 3 (ID and proof of residency):

• We need crisp, clear, glare-free images.
• Images should be full color.
• Some government IDs, especially passports, have a special machine readable zone. If you have a government ID with a machine readable zone, this is preferable since, well, it's easily read by machine. For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-readable_passport
• Proof of residence docs must have your full name, the same address you gave us in tier 2, and a date showing that the document is no more than 3 months old.
• Documents in some languages, such as Hebrew or Greek, may pose a problem. If in doubt, upload the document then contact support to see if it will be an issue.

Thanks!

Not that I'm aware.  XBT is used by XE.com, Bloomberg.com, CoinDesk.  Some discussion on the topic here:  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/campaign-for-xbt-a-new-iso-currency-code-is-required-for-bitcoin-148229

Isn't XBT also referring to a lower decimal?

BTC is now XBT.  If you've been using the API, XBTC will continue to work for a while but please switch over to using XXBT as soon as possible to avoid any problems later.

Thanks for sharing this info.

I agree.  We're looking for a partner to help us out with market making. If you know anyone, send em my way!


You're welcome!


As stated in the original post of this thread, margin trading is disabled for now but we plan to enable it around the end of the month.

I have noticed that currently there is NO margin available. This applies for all available pairs (BTC/EUR, BTC/LTC and LTC/EUR). Anyone has information on this topic???

EDIT: Also send support the following ticket:
I can only select None in Advanced order. 1,2,5 and 10 are disabled. How is this possible? There are enough funds available. I did a test to buy 0.1 BTC when >90 eur available in account. How can I select 1,2,5 or 10 as leverage in advanced order?

thank you for the switch

One of the things that are missing on all Bitcoin exchanges, including MtGox is a market maker. No Bitcoin exchange has that and it's one of the factors that contributes direly to the volatility. A market maker would ensure there will always be someone there to buy or sell to you, even if users themselves are not.

If you could partner with a business to provide such service or do it yourselves, you'd soon become the exchange of choice for everyone.

Informative video on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbSOHwCOnG0