Bitcoin Forum

In light of recent events, we just wanted you guys to know that we’re on the motherfucker.  Go back in there, chill out and wait for the cavalry which should be coming directly:  https://beta.kraken.com

Target launch for real trading is mid next week.  Beta accounts are auto-funded with funny money and will be wiped at launch.  Actual deposits/withdrawals are disabled.  Address support issues to beta-support@<domain>

You're on the motherfucker...?  :D

ETA: heeey, that's pretty slick.

This interface is great.  Best in the business.  Which bank(s) are you using?  Dwolla support?  Also I'm just going to paste the questions that Stephen Gornick usually asks new exchanges:

I got a chance to play around with the beta a week or so ago.  I agree that this looks very promising.

I seem to remember seeing a "Dwolla" option in the dummy withdrawal page, so I'm guessing they will be launching with Dwolla support (or are planning to have it at some point).

Please do, interface looks awesome, name is geeky funny, everything else looks professional, based in western country.

Shut up and take my fees.

Thanks!  Given Dwolla's history of screwing over Bitcoin exchanges, like our friends at TradeHill, we won't be supporting them.  We'll announce our banking partner at the time we open the site up for real deposits.



Most definitely.  A small percentage of the funds are kept in a hot wallet for withdrawals but the vast majority are kept in cold storage, offline.


1.  We don't have enough (any) experience here to give solid numbers.  It's going to depend on our daily withdrawal requirements.  My feeling is that if you need to withdraw a lot of BTC at once, you can probably wait a bit so it's better to sacrifice a little convenience for better security and only keep what is likely to be necessary in the hot wallet.

2.  Yes, all new deposits go directly to cold storage, for exactly that reason.

3.  Yes, cold storage is completely offline.



4.  Yes, Kraken maintains full reserves.  Customer funds reside in a bank account separate from our operations account and fees are pulled across on a daily basis.  Payward does not borrow customer funds for operations and we do not lend customer funds, even for margin trading within our own exchange.  Funds offered for margin are acquired from other sources.

5.  At the moment, backups are onsite but unless a meteor destroys the data center, we should be ok.  We'll expand to offsite shortly.  Data is replicated in real time and backed up on a daily basis.  If only the primary account database were lost, everything would still be available in backups.

6.  Good questions.  We just had a chat about this so please do not take this as the final word but here's what we're thinking:

A USD value would be assigned to all the losses and remaining balances.  All deposited funds are of equal standing up to a cap and beyond the cap are distributed pro rata.  So, if the cap were $100k and we had 10 users, 9 of which had $50k balances and 1 of which had a $1m balance ($1,450,000 total) and we lost $600k ($850k left), 9 guys would receive their $50k back and 1 guy would receive $400k back.  If you want to keep some exorbitant amount of money on the exchange, you take the risk or maybe we can find a way to insure it (which we have not had luck with so far).  This is if we are actually legally able to decide.  It may very well be that all funds must be redistributed pro rata without any sort of cap.  It may also be that funds held as USD have some extra legal protections that BTC do not.  More research and consideration is required.  We'd like to hear community thoughts on this matter.

As far as we understand, according to law and without the need to specify this (though we can to make our position clear), depositors would have preference over ordinary business debt.  You have given us your money to hold for safe keeping on your behalf and that money never touches our operations account, which should be the only account up for grabs by non-depositor creditors--it's not our money to take.  If for any reason Payward ever has less than full reserves, it should immediately transfer money from its operations account, even liquidate assets in order to return to full reserves.  The question is what happens in some catastrophic hack where even after liquidating all the company's assets we are still not able to make the depositors whole and we also have some other business debt.  The depositors would receive everything and the other creditors would be out of luck.



I hope you'll understand that we don't want to give too much away here.  If an intruder breaches our security, it'd be better for us (and you) if they did not know what to expect.

We've spent over $150k on our own hardware.  Our servers reside in locked racks in a private cage in an expensive top tier data center with armed guards, retina scans, video surveillance, etc.
Staff have all been thoroughly reviewed and for anything dangerous, multiple signatures are required.
Data is encrypted wherever possible and systems are both redundant and isolated from each other such that if someone were to gain access to one machine, they would likely not gain anything useful.
Customer service and verification systems are modeled somewhat after PCI compliance standards.  The office is wired on separate networks for separate purposes.  The systems that agents access your uploaded verification docs on cannot do anything but access those docs.  They'd use a different system for answering tickets.
The user interface takes better security over better UX in many instances, not giving you any error messages that might allow you to find accounts, emails, etc.
Two factor authentication is available with more advanced security features to come.
The API allows for two-factor on keys and quite granular permissions.

man... you guys are sending the wolf???  shieeeeeeeet,  that's all you had to say.

for real though, please tell me this new exchange (and others like it) are coming to save us from this ridiculous situation we are in,  definitely going to check it out.

Hi Kraken guys,



I have another idea. One that might not sit too well with everyone, but considering the recent events of buy and sell walling, I think it might be a good one:

And order cancellation fee of 10% of the usual fee. On other exchanges you see sometimes people deliberately manipulating the markets. And your exchange needs something that is absolutely different and a game changer. And that would be cancellation fees.

IN my bank's stock order book I pay similarly a fee for setting an order that is also being paid if i recall the order. And with this setup, you would create stability in a sea of insanity. Don't make it too big. Bring it to 10%. You don't want little investors to notice it, but deliberatley manipulating wall moving people should know what is coming to them.-

Watching.

What's your status on an API for trading and market data?
I assume it will be available eventually, but you should release it as soon as possible to give developmers of trading utilities and bots a headstart, so they can use the beta site to test their own tools/products and have them ready when you go into production.

They do have an API, but no official docs yet.  Here's some unofficial documentation that they sent me last week.  Note that this isn't final and also doesn't cover any of the trading functions.  Should give you some idea of how it will work though (similar to Gox and other exchanges out there now)

Beta testing!

Hum, that seems too perfect to be true. You are stating cold storage is completely offline. When refilling the hotwallet, at some point you have to broadcast the transaction to the network (be online). I guess you are signing the transaction offline then and broadcasting it from a connected node. What software do you use to perform such a task ? (the only one I know of is Armory available at https://bitcoinarmory.com/get-armory/ which is no longer usable for most of computers) Is it a self-made solution ? Are you using the native API calls createrawtransaction and signrawtransaction ? (which are tricky to manipulate because of local change addresses and require an in-depth understanding of the bitcoin protocol). I would love to see such an implementation if that's the case.

Otherwise, no chance your cold storage is completely offline.

For the new deposits security issues, one can argue it's not completely true. Since compromising the hotwallet generally means compromising the webserver, an attacker can then just modify the deposit addresses shown and new deposits will go right into his pocket. (Of course deposits to old addresses will still be secure)

Good luck guys, your project seems solid and looks like it may be the one serious professional-grade exchange the community is desperatly looking for.

There are multiple cold wallets, each with limited funds and, yes, they remain completely offline until they need to be used.  Currently, we have some semi cold storage as well so tapping the cold storage doesn't have to happen as often.  Soon we'll be upgrading to a custom system more like what you've described with Armory.  Fortunately, we've got a team with a very deep understanding of the protocol.

About the address injection, you're right but we have things in place to make it harder to succeed.  If someone were successful, it'd likely be noticed within a few deposits when customers come asking why they haven't been credited their coins.  The exchange would have to eat that loss but it's unlikely to be a huge amount of btc.

Thanks for the fond wishes and I hope we can live up to expectations!

Would you mind commenting on this reddit post (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1e5gt5/a_warning_about_krakencom/) Kraken?

Done: 

Today Payward is a software company. The public has been invited to test Payward's exchange software at beta.kraken.com. More about the company's employees, legal structure and position will be revealed if and when we ask you to trust us, which is not now. Chill out.

... I am chill.  I love your beta site.  I was just offering you to put everyone's worries to rest - which you just did (at least for me).

Right on.  Thanks :)

Looks amazing, great work, very promising.

In light of more recent events, hurry the krak up!

+1, the gox is on their knees, release the Kraken already!  :)

I have USD in hands but I want to buy LTC, would be nice if you guys support LTC before Gox.

Will kraken.com be phased out and replaced with payward.com?

So, can you withdraw the bitcoins you earn with kraken? What about the fiat?

Looking at the site, this seems like a broker, not an exchange. Can you clarify your position?

We are on it, but want to make sure everything is done right before launch.


We think it would be nice to support LTC too, but no definite ETA on that.


No. Payward is the company producing kraken.com


Kraken is both an exchange where you can exchange one currency for another and a Forex-like broker where you can trade currency pairs. You can withdraw any bitcoins/fiat you earn. But obviously a currency pair is a trading position only, not something you can withdraw. Any profit made from trading currency pairs can be withdrawn.

Edit: To clarify, the Forex-style trading is done on margin. Any margin trading is done as positions that are opened and only realize a profit or loss when closed - they don't produce an actual currency conversion.

I work for Payward, as vouched for by btcx here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192104.0

So, are all your trades done as positions which must be closed? Or do you have two types of trade depending on the symbol?

Is BTC/USD a currency pair?

Cheers, Paul.

There are two types of trades. For example, suppose you fund your account with USD. If BTC is trading for $100, you could buy 10 BTC for $1000. You have exchanged $1000 for 10 BTC and you can withdraw the 10 BTC to your private wallet if you like. Alternatively, you could open a $1000 long position in the BTC/USD pair on margin. This is an open trading position only and no profit/loss is realized until it is closed. There is no currency conversion and you don't own any BTC that you can withdraw. If the BTC/USD exchange rate climbs to $120 and you close the position at this rate, then you have a realized profit of $200 which you can then withdraw if you like.

The advantage of margin trading over currency exchange is that you can use leverage and also trade short. For example, if you use 5:1 leverage, you could open a $5,000 long position in BTC/USD with only $1000 margin (i.e. only $1000 of your account balance would be tied to this position and thus unavailable for other margin trades or currency exchanges). If you then close this position when the BTC/USD exchange rate climbs to $120, your profit is $1000. Alternatively, if you think the BTC/USD exchange rate is going to drop from $100, you could open a $5000 short position in BTC/USD using 5:1 leverage (and $1000 margin again) by opening the position as an order to sell. In this case you aren't really selling BTC, just opening a short position in BTC/USD. If the BTC/USD exchange rate drops to $80 and you close the position at that rate (with an order to buy), then you have a realized profit of $1000, which you can withdraw if you like, or use for other margin trades or currency exchanges.

Leverage allows you to open a position that is larger than your account balance. This can amplify your profits, but you have to be careful because it can also amplify your losses. Positions opened with margin should be considered trading positions only, not long-term investments. Long-term investments in Bitcoin should only be done by exchange.     

Ok, thanks - how do you distinguish between the two types of trades on the site / api?

And, I presume because you're operating as both an exchange and a broker, the price-feed for the btc currency pairs actually comes directly from your own exchange and not MtGox?

On the site, you use the same order forms for exchange or margin trading. The only difference is that for exchange, you select "None" for leverage and for margin trading you select a level of leverage (1:1, 2:1, 5:1, etc.). So if you select "None" you are creating an order to exchange in the selected currency pair and must have adequate funds in your account balance for the exchange. If you want to buy 10 BTC @ $100, you would select BTC/USD as the currency pair, "None" for leverage, and you would need at least $1000 in your account balance (actually you would need a little more to cover trading fees). If you select a level of leverage, you are creating an order to open a long (if the order is to buy) or short (if the order is to sell) position in the currency pair you have selected. If you create an order to buy 10 BTC @ $100 using 5:1 leverage, this is an order to open a $1000 long position in BTC/USD and only $200 from your account balance will be tied up in the position.

I haven't seen the API documentation yet, but I assume API will work similarly - i.e. no leverage for exchange orders and a level of leverage for margin orders.

The exchange rates for currency pairs, which governs prices both for both exchange and margin trading, will come from the market on Kraken and not from any other exchange. 

Perfect, thanks for the answers :)

One last question - are your fees fixed at 0.5% for both transaction types?

NP - The trading fees are the same for both transactions types. But for margin trades there will also be a margin maintenance fee because we are loaning you the funds for margin trades while the positions remain open. I believe at launch we won't charge a maintenance fee, but this will only be for a limited time. I'm not sure what the maintenance fee will be exactly, but I'll ask about this and get back to you.

Edit: To give a rough idea, the margin fee will work something like this. Suppose you open a $1000 long position in BTC/USD using margin. In doing so, you are borrowing the $1000 from us and we will charge an APR for this, but the fees will be assessed at least on a daily basis (possibly more frequently). The fees will be deducted from your account balance rather than being compounded into the loan. For example, suppose we charge 6% APR for borrowing USD and charge the fee for this on a daily basis. The daily fee for your $1000 position would then be $1000*.06/365 = $0.164. But this is only approximate since there may be other factors that change the amount. Also, the fee will be charged at a set time daily, so you will only be charged the daily fee for positions open at that time. If we charge the fee at 12 pm PST and you close your position at 11:59 am PST, you won't be charged the daily fee for this position. For a very short term trade, you might not be charged any margin fee. 

Also, the trading fees aren't fixed. As things are set on the site now, trading fees start at 0.5%, but go down with the amount of volume you trade over a 30 day rolling period (with a low floor of 0.25%). So fees decrease the more you trade, but they can go back up. If you didn't trade at all for 30 days, your fee would be back up to 0.5%. With the next update to the beta site, you will be able to view the fee schedule by clicking "Help" and looking under the "Fees and Pair Info" tab. This should be the fee schedule at launch, but I suppose it is remotely possible that it might change a little.    

need to trade now. please :)

interesting...

the domain is registered in my area...

you guys own this?

http://www.yelp.com/biz/verge-gallery-and-studio-project-sacramento-2

:D

Yup. I'm the founder of that project, but I live in San Francisco now.  http://vergeart.com/about

really nice...

good to know there's someone planning/creating something big in BTC near my area..

:) if you guys are looking for janitor.. let me know... ill be the cleaning man...

wanted to get paid in BTC... :D

Haha will do.  Thanks for the offer :)

How are the margin traders going to be funded?  Is the site going to fund them and charge interest or will there be an opportunity for USD investors to lend their funds to traders similar to bitfinex?

Thanks,

We won't be offering a loan market for individual investors like Bitfinex does. Margin fees for a given currency pair at a give time will be the same for all traders. 

Any idea of what the rates will be for the traders?

The margin fees will be based on an APR as explained in post #31 above. But not sure what the rates will be at this point. We won't be charging a margin fee initially at launch.

Our general counsel's interview with Adam Levine was posted today!  Starts at 12:27:  http://letstalkbitcoin.com/post/52402394143/lets-talk-bitcoin-episode-014-in-search-of

Nice to see that you are back, hope that your site development is running well. By the way, I have not received your response for a very long time, could you please reply back to me? Thanks.

I'm sorry.. maybe I missed the message.  Please just send me a PM.

In light of Fincen's recent guidance (http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html) kraken.com would clearly fall under the definition of a money service business and more specifically an exchanger. Therefore I ask:

1. Is kraken.com registered as a money service business?
2. Does the company have the necessary money transmission licenses for the 48 states of the U.S which require them?

The guidance indicates operating an exchange to those 48 states whilst not meeting 1 and 2 is in violation of US law (even if the exchange is not physically located in the US, but merely serves US customers).

You're right!  Like MtGox, BitStamp, Coinbase, etc., once launched we'd qualify as a money transmitter in most US states which means we'd require licenses (or an exemption) in each US state in which we have a customer.  Most people believe that it's enough to be registered federally, or to locate your business outside the US but, as you've pointed out, if you serve US customers, wherever your business is domiciled, you need to be licensed in the state(s) in which those customers reside.  We'll reveal our US coverage at the time of launch.  Obviously, it'd be irresponsible to put customer funds at risk of seizure by operating illegally and that is not something we intend to do.

Cool. To clarify, would you have the necessary money transmission licenses before you start serving US customers or are you going to risk it and just start serving US customers with only a money service business registration and no licenses? I'm sure your company has intentions to get the licenses at some stage, the important thing is whether you start accepting US deposits before you get them.

It would be illegal, punishable criminally and greatly reduce our chances of being granted licenses later if we were to begin operating without the necessary US state money transmitter licenses.  I think it's great that some businesses are willing to put their necks on the line to serve Bitcoin adoption but it's not a risk we're willing to take for ourselves nor your money.  We will not serve those customers we cannot legally serve.  For illegal exchanges, you have the three options mentioned above, and many more.

Great work. You're a credit to the community. It gives me confidence in the future of Bitcoin that there are finally exchanges that are going to do everything by the book and to be frank people don't realise how desperately we need this. A lot of exchanges spin similar lines but when you get down to the nitty gritty of it all, they don't have the licenses.

>btcx
sounds interesting
by when do you think you will start?

We've got no shortage of unlicensed exchanges, right?  What we really need to take bitcoin to the next level is an exchange that people can trust to act predictably and in accordance with the law when it comes to handling their money.  We've spent so much on building the best exchange technically that it'd be a mistake to risk it all over some solvable compliance issues.  It's difficult and it's expensive and it takes time but the market is there and somebody's gotta do it.


As soon as we can.  I think we'll be able to launch in at least some jurisdictions within 1 month.

sleek looking site

are you guys are going to route with other exchanges.. ?  (gox)
the reason why i left bitfinex is because the low volume... since they left gox .
cant even trade a good 100btc withoutout  massive slippage ..

No, but we'll have good liquidity. I guess you can see if it meets your needs after we launch.

hey
one question:
so leveraged positions aren't actually executed right? if i short 50 bitcoins with a 1:5 leverage those aren't actually sold on the market driving the price down or up respectively with a long position, correct?

If I understand what you are asking, the answer is no. As far as your account goes, when you go long 50 BTC/USD using leverage, no currency conversion takes place for your account. You simply have a long trading position in the BTC/USD currency pair. But in order for you to open this position 50 BTC are bought with USD on the exchange. You don't own those 50 BTC though, because you have borrowed the funds to buy them.

but those BTC are actually bought on the market and influence the actual market price. it is not a "theoretical" transaction ie a contract for payment of the difference where the order is never executed on the market

Correct. Real buying and selling on happens on the market but leverage trading in one's account means only opening or closing a long or short currency pair position (no currency conversion in one's account).

If there's one thing i'd be highly wish for ..

to be able to edit an order .. like moving stoploss or take profit trigers.. to other price levels..  


eg:

buy long at 109  and stoploss at 108 today:    price goes up to 115 stable.. ..   but i'm feeling it will be going up for some more in the future..
then i want to adjust the stoploss to a higher price.. like 113 ..  

maybe i'm not doing things right.. but it seems not adjustable for now in beta.

regards

Something like a "cancel and replace" option for orders would be handy. I'll check with the devs on this. My guess is that it's something we'll have eventually, but how soon I don't know.

or just editable fields in the current order thats active, would make more sense to me..  no need to fully replace with a new order ..
then again. i dont know how you guys. did your developments so..   i'm guessing it's not that easy as it looks to make some fields editable in active order.

good luck ;)

I understand there are two types of trades, "currency trades" where I actually own and can withdraw my bitcoins I buy and also pair trades where I open a position but do not actually own the coins.

If I make a pair-trade does it actually affect the price of bitcoin on your server?  Or do only currency-trades affect the price of bitcoin.

Pair trades also affect price because there is real buying/selling on the exchange behind the pair trade. See also my responses to codesuela, who had a similar question.

It could be done but you'd lose priority.. it'd be the same as creating a new order, maybe just a little more convenient. 

Hi Dargo -
What kind of documentation is going to be required to open a kraken account?  And how will you want it delivered?

/cet

cet,

I'll have to check on the details, but documentation shouldn't be anything that you will need advance time to prepare (assuming you have a government issued ID). Delivery will be a matter of uploading pics of the documents from a special page on our site. All this will be made very clear at launch. Till then it's possible things can change, so don't take anything I say about it as definite.

 

sounds good - much easier than mt gox.  I'm finding that apstille certification requirement for getting trusted status with very painful.  My state loves to reject apstille requests for apparently no reason and having an easier document verification process would be a significant selling point for using kraken service.

Are you still on target for starting service this month?

Yeah, I think our process will be easier than Gox, but we do have to collect sufficient info to be fully compliant. A launch this month looks quite possible at this point.

common guys.. release the kraken ;)

Do you currently support ACH withdrawals for US customers?

Also, I signed up, but I couldn't activate my account.  I'm sent you a PM regarding my issue.

Not now, but we will once live trading for US customers starts.


Got it, and we are looking into the issue.

let me ask something allready asked but not realy clarified:


the demo uses MtGox market data right? once launched Kraken will be it's own and only market?

Yes, in beta mode, our order book derives from Gox's order book (it's similar, but not exactly of course). Once we launch, Kraken will be it's own market.

Will there be an active market-making or orderbook will be filled by users only (low liquidity).

if they dont link to mtgox the trading will be pretty much dead

mtgox itself is pretty much dead. at least declining like hell.

kraken can link to bitstamp like bitfinex does

stop posting in blue ffs cant read shit

https://i.imgur.com/nQGxydc.jpg

what is ffs?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FFS

Alright

stop flooding people, back to topic


any date for the launch in sight?

We don't have a date, but the "to do before launch" list is getting pretty short.  :)

But some of the things on the list are hard to get an ETA for, so it's hard to be specific.

One thing I've noticed is that the history chart on the top bar is difficult to trigger into a drop down, and once you get the full size version then it's also difficult to tell it to go away.  I'd suggest you put a couple of buttons on the chart to make it more obvious how to interact with it. 

I'd also suggest that you do a proto type of the interface to supply required identity documentation and test that out before going live.

/cet

Thanks for the suggestion. I what sense is the chart difficult to trigger into a drop down? It should drop when you click on the little chart symbol. That seems easy, but maybe you just mean it's hard to know that clicking on the little chart will make a chart drop down. 


The interface will be tested carefully before launch. If you're suggesting we test it out with actual users in beta before launch, we might do something like that but it's not certain. It's hard to just test it out with users if the users are providing real info/documents - in that case we're doing it for real anyway.

I was trying to play with the history chart using an ipad.  Each time I clicked on the chart it would adjust the position of the red line showing the closing price, high and low of the day but wouldn't change the size frome the little button to the large version.  Once the large version popped up then it woulnd't change back to the small version.  I didn't haven any problem when I was using the regular pc version.

/cet

its good that you try to solve the problems before the official start , others do the opposite way  ;)

This is sadly all too true.

I see - thanks for the clarification. We'll look into this. Clicking on the little chart also works for closing the chart, but you probably tried that. It may be that the little chart is broken as a button for open/close with iPad. Can you tell me what version of Safari you are running on your iPad and whether you have java script enabled?

I'm running mobile safari 5.1 for iOS 5.1, javascript enabled.
/cet

Thanks - I realize now the I knew the version you have from discussion of a different issue.

Is there any word on Kraken release date?

/cet

We're waiting on a few things that could fall into place anytime now, but could also take a while longer, so it's hard to say anything definite about a launch date. Hang in there, we're doing everything we can to make it sooner than later.   

Hi Dargo,

Can you clarify some points regarding the API?

1) What is the request/throttle limit before getting banned, if any? (e.g. 1 request per second)

2) Will you allow users to download all previous trade data with https://api.kraken.com/0/public/Trades? Many users have a need for bulk trade data, but this can cause undue load on API servers (hence MtGox's plan to provide a Google bigquery database), so if you don't want to support bulk data through this API method please consider an alternative way to access this data :)

3) Are there any plans to implement a socket API for realtime data?

Thanks, I look forward to your release :D

^^^ nitrous, I've passed your questions to the dev responsible for the API. Will let you know as soon as I hear back.

It's a bit complicated since there are a variety of factors that can change things, but the basic limits are as follows. The limit for sustained requests is 1 request every 5 seconds. The limit for sustained orders is about 1 per minute. The sustained limits can be exceeded in short bursts. Keep in mind that this is subject to change as we see how people use the API.


Yes. But we'll probably have to add more systems to support it, so it may not be available initially.


Yep. As soon as more basic stuff is taken care of, it'll have priority. No ETA yet of course.   


Yeah, we're looking forward too, and doing everything we can to make it ASAP!  :)

Thank you very much, that's great :) Are there any plans to reduce the limit for orders in the future? I remember using the beta a while ago and finding that I couldn't close a position because I had exceeded the rate limit.

This strikes me as crazy too low, by about two orders of magnitude.

Not that I know of, but our plans are flexible and we want to do everything we can to meet the needs of our clients (ya know, within reason, given certain limitations, the resources at our disposal and all that) - so please continue to communicate with us about what features you'd like to have. Since you hit the rate limit in beta trading with fake money, there's some question as to whether it would be an issue for you trading with real money, but if so let us know.   

So you're saying that you need to trade at a sustained rate around 1 order every half second?

Ok, I understand that the clearing algorithms can be quite taxing so it's a good thing that you're enforcing some conservative limits. This is probably what other exchanges have got wrong in the past and the reason for their crashes, so this is some good forethought, though hopefully you'll be able to reduce the limit as you grow and get new resources. Yeah most likely; it was my first time on the beta and I went a little overboard with trading ;)

No, but that would be a nice margin of safety. An average rate of 1 order every few seconds is not crazy.

Any way to update the post here to reflect current situation.  Seems like it's a bit out of date.  I see Dargo is answering some of the questions now.  Just came here to check on the status, but don't want to read through the whole thread.

Hi Hfleer, here are the last two status updates from Dargo:

Yeah, we could probably reduce the limit in the future, and it'd be even more likely if enough users let us know they need a lower limit.

I see, just wanted to make sure I understood your suggestion. It's not crazy, but also not something we'll be able to accommodate at launch. Possibly later though.

Any ETA for Kraken to go out of beta for live trading?

I'd love to give an ETA, but  :-X can't. We're just trying to avoid projections at this point since they can be unreliable and a set-up for disappointment. We've made great progress in the last few weeks, but depending on how things go it could still be a while before we're able to take certain services live.     

May 3rd. Just keepin a record.

I'm using the BETA, but I get the following error when I try to log in:

https://i.imgur.com/Xr7SGKc.png

BTW, nice site, hope it can go live soon.

Should be fixed now - let me know if you are still having issues.


Thanks - we're hoping to go live soon too.

Fixed.

I was trying to develop a liquidity provider algo to this exchange but it's impossible to work with current rate limits.
I'm receiving the error rate limit exceeded even if i post one request every 6 seconds.
That limit is ridiculously low for developing trading bots.
Hope you will find a way to allow at least 1 order or request per second in the future, this is a very serious issue for an exchange that wants to attract liquidity and be competitive.   
Can you please write of these limits in the API page?
It sucks to lose 3 working days to code something big and then realizing it can't work because of this ridiculous low rate limit!

Hi - It's not a big deal, but you've necroed our beta thread. We have a post-launch thread now and that's the best place to post stuff (it's in this same subforum). 

I agree that if you're trying to operate as a liquidity provider or market maker, the standard limits aren't nearly enough. But we do offer higher limits for people who will be acting as liquidity providers. Just create a support ticket about it and PM me with the ticket number.

The standard rate limit should allow for 1 call every 5 seconds, so I'm not sure why you're having trouble with 1 call every 6 seconds.