Did you make a support request about your payment? If so, you can send me the ticket number by PM and I can look into it for you.

Such assurances from a bank are not reliable at all. We've seen in many cases where these assurances are made by the bank to the customer only to find out later that the payment was not sent at all or was held up somewhere along the way (at a correspondent bank) and not credited to the beneficiary as the bank claimed.

As I said before, the way to get this resolved is to have your bank send Fidor an MT999 SWIFT message about the payment. I'll see if we can provide you with a letter from Fidor stating this to show to your bank, which we will provide to you through your support ticket.

As I already explained to you by PM, we have not received your 10K USD deposit. We have contacted Fidor to see if they have received the payment but it has not been credited to our account. You sent a USD deposit to Fidor but Fidor doesn't support USD deposits for us. You asked earlier in this thread about sending USD deposits and I warned you then that this was probably not an option for you.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=290799.msg14762275#msg14762275

If you send USD using payment instructions that are clearly marked as only being for EUR and after being warned not to send USD, you shouldn't be surprised that there is a problem with the payment. As I said, we are checking with Fidor to see if they have received the payment. If they have, they will return it. If they cannot find it, you will need to have your bank initiate an investigation request. In the case of transfers that don't arrive, the sending bank must initiate the investigation because the receiving bank does not know the details or path of the payment. Your bank can initiate the investigation by sending Fidor an MT999 SWIFT message.

I think next time, if you try any other exchange:
1) complete the verification before you send any money.
2) send a small amount first, to test if everything works fine.

There are countries and other factors that cause problems, as you may know now.
But whatever happens now with your account and money, Kraken is no scam and it works well for alot of users. The main problem will be your country or bank or whatever, which could also cause problems at other exchanges.

I see that the other questions were not answered by the links, but your first one is. Margin call is 80%. 100% is the level at which you cannot open new positions but that is not margin call. "If my leverage is 2:1 (and I don't have more balance) the price only has to move 40% (instead of 50%) in the wrong direction to be margin called?" - this cannot be answered because your margin level depends on your account equity and the margin used as explained in the links I provided. You cannot choose what currency will be used as "collateral."


1) No - answered above I think - margin call is 80% and the level at which you cannot add new positions is 100%.

2) If the price of bitcoin falls, then the value of your collateral also falls.

3) The system doesn't assign a certain balance in a certain currency to the margin position - it is more flexible than that. Suppose you have 1 BTC and 400 EUR in your account and go long 0.5 BTC @ a price of 400 EUR and 2:1 leverage. The margin used to open the position is 100 EUR since you used 2:1 leverage. Assuming for simplicity no change in market price, you could then withdraw all of your BTC or all of your EUR because either way the remaining balance in your account is sufficient to keep the position above 100% margin level (we don't let you withdraw below 100%).  Either way your margin level is at 400% because your equity is 400 EUR and your used margin is 100 EUR and margin level = equity/used margin.    

Hope this finally answers your questions!

Yeah, the trading guide needs a revision to add more details and examples. Let me offer a quick crash course here that will hopefully answer most of the questions you have.

When placing margin orders everything in the order form works the same as it does for spot trades, because a leveraged margin position is just a spot trade executed through an advance financed by Kraken. For example, a long XBT/EUR position is opened by advancing the trader EUR to buy XBT in a spot trade. And a short XBT/EUR position is opened by advancing the trader XBT to sell for EUR in a spot trade.

So to create a margin order, you enter everything in the order form just as you would for a regular spot trade (the "Amount" field still determines the size of the order, the price parameters for the various order types work the same, etc.) - EXCEPT you select a level of leverage for the order. Selecting a level of leverage means that the order, if executed, will execute a spot trade through an advance financed by Kraken (rather than a spot trade executed directly from the balances in your account).

What about the different levels of leverage? The different levels of leverage just determine how much of your account balance is "tied" to the position as a kind of "collateral" for the advance used to open the position. For example, if you have 10 BTC in your account and open a 5 BTC long @5:1 leverage, then 1 BTC is tied to the position. Since only 1 BTC is tied to the position, you could withdraw up to 9 BTC, but not more, because that last 1 BTC is tied to the position. Similarly, the 9 BTC is available in your account as buying power for opening more positions or making other trades. With 5:1 leverage, you could open positions up to 50 BTC in total volume (but keep in mind that having positions that are much larger than the balance of your account puts you at greater risk of margin call/liquidation, so be very careful about doing this).

Alternatively, if you select 2:1 leverage instead of 5:1 leverage, then 2.5 BTC would be tied to the 5 BTC position. In this case you would only be able to withdraw up to 7.5 BTC and would only have 7.5 BTC buying power left for other trades.

The risk of your margin position to amplified losses or margin call/liquidation is really determined by the size of the position relative to your account balance (and not merely by the level of leverage you select). If you have a 10 BTC balance and open a 5 BTC position, the choice of 5:1 leverage over 2:1 leverage does not really make the position more risky. I think for most traders it's better to just choose the higher level of leverage leaving more buying power in the account, so long as the trader is mindful of not getting to the point where they have positions that are 5x the size of the account balance (but of course for some traders with very high risk tolerance, getting to this 5x level might be OK for their trading style).

Another key point to keep in mind is that not all currencies are "margin currencies" - i.e. currencies that can be "collateralized" for the advance. Currently the only margin currencies on Kraken are BTC, EUR, and USD. So, for example, if you only have ripples (XRP) in your account, you will not be able to margin trade at all.

Hope this helps!


Thanks - it's not that we don't care, just have too many other projects/distractions and this has been neglected. I'll see if we can get it fixed soon though.