Bitcoin Forum

I've just been hired as a technical writer at

www.kraken.com

a new exchange (we are still in beta, so no live trading just yet). One task I'm working on is filling out site content, including the FAQ list. I'd like to get input from folks here on bitcointalk about the questions you would most like to have answered when you consider joining a new exchange. There are pretty obvious things, like information about our fee structure, margin policy, order types, security practices, etc., so it might be good to focus on the less obvious questions. But for the most part, I just want to hear about what is important to you, so don't be too concerned with what's obvious or not. Keep in mind that I may have limited time to answer your questions right away in this thread, since my focus right now is the site content. But if your questions don't end up getting addressed in the site content, I'll do what I can to get answers for you in this thread eventually.

Dargo   

Vouch for this.  Dargo is presently employed with Payward (Kraken.com)

One question that comes to mind is regarding whether or not Kraken plans on implementing a quality live stream data platform.  If Kraken wants to compete with Mt. Gox, they will need a data streaming platform much like Clark Moody's site (http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com) along with advanced candlestick charting across multiple timeframes (perhaps integration with SierraChart via a websocket-like feed from BitcoinCharts).  If Kraken has good APIs & succeeds, perhaps 3rd party programmers will develop a solution as well.

I also am interested in what kind of trade history would be provided, if any (unlike Mt. Gox's trade history which breaks them into tiny orders rather than providing the lump sums with average costs, and fees broken down accordingly).  Quality trade history that is easily exportable for tax accounting purposes would certainly be beneficial for some people.

Thanks for your input zhalox!

Regarding your first question, we do have a drop-down chart (pretty basic - main options are candlestick or bar, 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month time frames). We have API, but I'll have to ask about the possible integration with SierraChart.

I'll have to check on your second question as well, but I tried selling 99 BTCs in my beta account to see what would happen. In the trade history screen, this showed up as two trades of 49 and 50 BTC. I'm pretty sure this didn't simply match two bids in the order book, so there may be some averaging. But like I said, I'll have to check, since this test isn't conclusive.

Off the top of my head, things I always look for:

1.  What deposit and withdrawal methods are available & what are the fees and ETA associated with them.
2.  What are the account limits (withdrawal or deposit limits per day/month)
3.  What does the trading fee schedule look like? (flat fee, volume based, maker/taker, etc)
4.  What (if anything) is required for AML verification and how does that affect account limits.
5.  Security considerations - third party auditing, scanning, 2 factor auth, hot/warm/cold wallets, etc.)
6.  Business considerations - what licensing do you have? bonded or insured? banking relationships (e.g. more than one bank)?


And specifically for API stuff:

1.  Decent documentation (Gox really lacks here).
2.  Please include info about rate limits for method calls (if there are any, how often can I query market depth for example)

I'm not an active trader or anything, but one question I would need answered before I would your exchange is:
What measures have you taken to avoid having your bank block your account(s) (AML) , forcing you  to shut down?

All I really care about is ease of deposit and withdrawl.
I want to be able to send BTC in, and get money wired same day.   And vice versa.  Like today, I would have like to send 25k in and buy BTC and then send the btc to my own wallet.
I do not day trade but look at exchanges as a conversion tool.
I am more than willing to certify who I am or open a corporate account and certify the officers (just like I have to do with HSBC and Standard Chartered etc) but I expect to be able to move money around after that.

riSe KraKen RisE

ps- make sure you have a nice trollbox

Great - thanks for the input everyone. If I get a chance, I'll try to come back later and address some of your questions here. But for now I'll just generically say that we'll be addressing all this in the FAQs (not sure about the troll (or more optimistically, chat)  box, but this isn't the first request I've heard for this, so will bring it up with the devs).

If you didn't know, we are in open beta right now, so you can go to

beta.kraken.com

and open an account that will be funded with funny money, so you can explore, try to break stuff, etc. Keep in mind, though, that the account will be wiped before we go live, so you'll have to create a new one for real trading. One thing you'll notice is the lack of site content, which is why I'm so busy.  :P

D

very slick.. i tried it out..  real nice

but yes, a chat box makes everyone feel like they are in the pit on wall street even if it is mostly trolling.. all in good fun
just filter out link posts so people dont get phished

Thanks DPoS - things will be slick at launch, but not without room for improvement. In the absence of a chat box, perhaps a kraken thread in the speculation board will bring some fun (but yeah, I get that it isn't the same). 

I suggest a fee for order withdrawal. A miniscule amount of the real fees, but enough to hurt people who deliberately move fake buy and sell walls.

Thanks for the suggestion Schrankwand - we won't be able to implement this at launch, but I'll make sure it is at least considered down the road. It would be nice to discourage fake orders, but at the same time our users might be unhappy with fees for withdrawing orders, even if they are small. Since Gox is the primary market maker right now, I wonder how much impact fake walls at kraken would have. Some for sure, since each exchange makes its own market to some extent, in spite of Gox being primary.

We've got more content up on the beta site now. Any feedback is appreciated.

https://beta.kraken.com/help/faq

https://beta.kraken.com/help/fees-and-pair-info

https://beta.kraken.com/help/trading-guide

https://beta.kraken.com/help/api

https://beta.kraken.com/security/practices

The AML/KYC account verification info isn't up yet, but should be soon.

D

On leveraged positions, can you guarantee that I will never drop below 0 in my account? I know I should always set the order up to close well short of this, but what would happen if this mechanism failed, or if I was using a trading bot and it malfunctioned?

Also, are there any plans to raise the maximum leverage beyond 10x?

No, we can't guarantee your account won't go negative. Margin call level & margin liquidation level are designed to make it unlikely, but if the market moves fast enough there's nothing we can do to prevent it. 


Not that I know of. For a pair like BTC/USD that is highly volatile 10x is a lot. Really high leverage like 250x only makes sense for traditional currency pairs like EUR/USD where the volatility is low. But I suppose if we ever offer traditional pairs, we would offer higher leverage for those pairs.   

1. Offer to your clients for free MT4 or MT5: http://www.metaquotes.net/en/company

2. Integrate (data feed + trading gateway) with MC http://www.multicharts.com/ and NT http://www.ninjatrader.com/

and you will kill other exchanges. what your competitors offer in this regard is laughable.


MT is a standard free-for-end-users charting and trading application in forex market. MC and NT are leading non-free (up to $1.5k per license) charting and trading applications for traders in forex and futures markets.

Thanks Loozik! All this would be nice.  :D I think we want to get something along these lines going as soon as the devs have time for it, but not sure exactly what we'll go with. But I'll make sure your suggestion gets considered.

Good.

The market will be your own market?

When I closed a few positions in quick succession, I was then unable to open a trade for the next couple minutes on the grounds that my rate limit was exceeded. What is the rate limit on the number of trades I can make?

Also, with regards to Loozik's idea, I think that would be great, but can you also keep the API as well? Very few forex brokers seem to offer both (and if they do, they charge for the API). This is quite important to me and others, and I think it would definitely set you apart from both bitcoin and forex exchanges alike.

Yes

I'm not sure about the rate limit, but I'm checking on this.

And of course I can't make any promises at this point about future features, but I don't see any reason why we would take away API if we go with something like what Loozik suggests.

1) Where are your offices located (physical street address)
2) Where are your servers located (city/country at a minimum).

For security reasons, I can't give you that information but we're at all the Bitcoin meetups in San Francisco if you ever want to chat.

Just an observation.

Your create account page does not ask for confirmation of PASSWORD when setting up.

This is a minimal feature to ensure people don't mistype their password, or at least ensures they make the same mistake twice. Normally setup the same for email addresses too.

For your potential customers' security reasons, you need to tell people where you're located.  Knowing which country's laws your company is subject to is important.  Knowing that you have a physical office space in a business district as opposed to operating out of a spare bedroom is also important.

Good point - passing this along to the devs.

While it might give a potential customer some comfort to know the physical location, it is also a potential security risk for us and our actual customers to give away the location of our office. I'm not sure much could actually be gained from breaking into our office, but we certainly don't want to invite this by giving out our address. For many (if not all) of our competitors who give addresses, these addresses are not the actual physical location of offices. If you search the addresses given by Bitstamp and Campbx, for example, you will find that multiple businesses are listed under exactly the same address. Compare these addresses:

https://campbx.com/faq.php

http://www.deimports.com/contact.html

They are exactly the same. Campbx isn't giving out their physical office address, and they are smart not to.   

Before we launch, the "About" section  on the site will be filled in with the info about Payward (the company behind Kraken) we are willing to share. Maybe it will include an address, but it certainly won't be the real address of our physical office space. Other information will also be filled out (such as our "Legal" section). If potential customers think that we aren't revealing enough for trust, then that is their decision. But we appreciate people letting us know what kind of information they would like to know in case we have overlooked something we are comfortable sharing.     

I hope everyone realizes how bullish this all is.

An exchange that is
> written by competent people
> fully compliant with regulations
> highly responsive on the forums
> easy to deposit to and withdraw from

would be a godsend and apparently this one is at least 3 out of those 4.

Ah, payward. Confused you guys with the paymium scammera

When you release, would it be possible to support 'trial' accounts, basically like beta accounts where you can try out trading without actually risking real assets. This would be useful for people trying out bots or wanting to get started with bitcoin trading but who aren't confident enough to use real money yet and could open up bitcoin to a lot more people. It could work by matching their trades and positions with real trades on the order books so that it could remain realistic with real trade delays and live price changes.

I'm pretty sure we will still want to have some kind of trial account with fake money after real trading launches.