[ANN] KRAKEN.COM - Exchange with USD EUR GBP JPY CAD BTC LTC XRP NMC XDG STR ETH

[Dargo]

By what means can you buy/sell USD to cash/bank?

Get verified (tiers 1 and 2 are very simple and quick to do), then do a wire or sepa transfer using the deposit page. Then you can trade with the fiat you've deposited, and then do a withdrawal.

This is basically right, but the only fiat we offer for trading right now is EUR. The only way to deposit USD is to have your bank or our bank convert to EUR for the deposit. For the withdrawal, it'd have to be your bank that does the conversion back to USD since our bank won't do that.

This is a temporary situation since we'll have USD deposits fairly soon (say within a month if all goes well - and yeah, it might not).

[nitrous]

I've just setup OTP for my account. I haven't used the API yet, but will my API keys need to use the OTP as well or is that only if I setup additional API-key-OTPs from the security page? (i.e., can I still access the API without using OTP)

[Dargo]

I've just setup OTP for my account. I haven't used the API yet, but will my API keys need to use the OTP as well or is that only if I setup additional API-key-OTPs from the security page? (i.e., can I still access the API without using OTP)

It's only if you set up two-factor OTP specifically for stuff that can be done with the API keys that you'd need the OTP. If you don't set it up, you can use the API without OTP.

[nitrous]

I've just setup OTP for my account. I haven't used the API yet, but will my API keys need to use the OTP as well or is that only if I setup additional API-key-OTPs from the security page? (i.e., can I still access the API without using OTP)

It's only if you set up two-factor OTP specifically for stuff that can be done with the API keys that you'd need the OTP. If you don't set it up, you can use the API without OTP.

Ahh good, thanks

[nameface]

CONGRATS ON THE LAUNCH! I'm a verified Commander, and I'm about to send in a small deposit 

Congratulations to Jesse and team! I participated in the beta and I have been following Kraken's progress over the months with great interest. It would be great if Kraken used the XBT designation for bitcoin.

Thanks, Jon!  I'll bring up the XBT suggestion with the team.  I agree it's probably where things are headed anyway.

+1

Why not aim to make Bitcoin as friendly as possible to capital markets.

I snagged the domain XBTXRP.com last week after I had this vision where I saw the following scrolling across the ticker tape at the NYSE ->  XAU 3700 XAG 125 XBT 900 XRP 2.50 

[Dargo]

Please add PPC to your exchange. We have a wonderful community behind this great and growing coin. Thanks!

Our CEO addressed the possibility of a PPC pair here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=290799.msg3112257#msg3112257

[Herp]

It's front page article on Coindesk http://www.coindesk.com/kraken-opens-for-trading-with-euros-bitcoins-and-litecoins/

[Dargo]

It's front page article on Coindesk http://www.coindesk.com/kraken-opens-for-trading-with-euros-bitcoins-and-litecoins/

Cool - thanks!

[BKM]

Feature Request

Pending deposits of Digital Currencies with number of confirmations required to go before final

[Dargo]

Feature Request

Pending deposits of Digital Currencies with number of confirmations required to go before final

Yep, great idea, and we're already working on it - thanks.

[nitrous]

You should consider creating an official IRC channel on freenode

[Stephen Gornick]

I have a concern with any exchange that also supports alt-coins, and shared that concern here:
 - http://bitcoinmoney.com/post/53207712103

There are four specific scenarios I would like to know what Kraken's policy is should they occur:

A.) My Kraken exchange account holds only fiat and bitcoins, and I've never traded for Litecoins.  Would I be exposed to any risk of loss to those funds should there be a successful 51% attack against Litecoin?

B.) I have a balance of Litecoins and fiat, but had no litecoins deposited to Kraken in any block that was ultimately orphaned as the result of the 51% attack.  Would I be exposed to any risk of loss to those funds should there be a successful 51% attack against Litecoin?

C.) I had bitcoins and I traded them for Litecoins.  Following this trade the attacker released blocks that resulted in a double spend such that the Litecoins I received were from the attacker's account (i.e.,  Litecoins deposited with a transaction that no longer confirms or was double spent).  Following the successful 51% attack against Litecoin, do I still have Litecoins that I can withdraw (or trade back into Bitcoins)?

D.) I deposited litecoins from a block that utimately was orphaned as the result of a successful 51% attack against Litecoin.   Before the attack I was able to trade those litecoins for bitcoins which remain in my account.    After the successful 51% attack against Litecoin, do I stil have the ability to withdraw those bitcoins?

[btcx]

You should consider creating an official IRC channel on freenode

No way   I've seen how much time is wasted on there!

[pand70]

I have a concern with any exchange that also supports alt-coins, and shared that concern here:
 - http://bitcoinmoney.com/post/53207712103

There are four specific scenarios I would like to know what Kraken's policy is should they occur:

A.) My Kraken exchange account holds only fiat and bitcoins, and I've never traded for Litecoins.  Would I be exposed to any risk of loss to those funds should there be a successful 51% attack against Litecoin?

B.) I have a balance of Litecoins and fiat, but had no litecoins deposited to Kraken in any block that was ultimately orphaned as the result of the 51% attack.  Would I be exposed to any risk of loss to those funds should there be a successful 51% attack against Litecoin?

C.) I had bitcoins and I traded them for Litecoins.  Following this trade the attacker released blocks that resulted in a double spend such that the Litecoins I received were from the attacker's account (i.e.,  Litecoins deposited with a transaction that no longer confirms or was double spent).  Following the successful 51% attack against Litecoin, do I still have Litecoins that I can withdraw (or trade back into Bitcoins)?

D.) I deposited litecoins from a block that utimately was orphaned as the result of a successful 51% attack against Litecoin.   Before the attack I was able to trade those litecoins for bitcoins which remain in my account.    After the successful 51% attack against Litecoin, do I stil have the ability to withdraw those bitcoins?

You can answer all your "concerns" with common sense.
Just guess what will happen to your litecoins actual value after a 51% attack.
Same applies to bitcoins if you have the same concerns for a 51% bitcoin attack.

[Dargo]

For those interested in depositing USD to our bank account and letting our bank handle the conversion to EUR, here's some data on the exchange rate with our bank. For an approximately $500 wire sent 9/3 and received 9/6, the EUR/USD exchange rate with our bank was about 1.39. According to google, the EUR/USD exchange rate during this time was around 1.32. So it looks like our bank is charging around 5% more than the going rate. This is very approximate and it may depend on the amount.  

Given that you'd have to use your own bank for the conversion on withdrawals anyway, we highly recommend that you handle the conversion with your bank, and hopefully you can get a much better rate.  

Edit: Remember that this business of converting to EUR is temporary. Soon we'll have deposits in other fiat, including USD of course.

[btcx]

I have a concern with any exchange that also supports alt-coins, and shared that concern here:
 - http://bitcoinmoney.com/post/53207712103

There are four specific scenarios I would like to know what Kraken's policy is should they occur:

A.) My Kraken exchange account holds only fiat and bitcoins, and I've never traded for Litecoins.  Would I be exposed to any risk of loss to those funds should there be a successful 51% attack against Litecoin?

B.) I have a balance of Litecoins and fiat, but had no litecoins deposited to Kraken in any block that was ultimately orphaned as the result of the 51% attack.  Would I be exposed to any risk of loss to those funds should there be a successful 51% attack against Litecoin?

C.) I had bitcoins and I traded them for Litecoins.  Following this trade the attacker released blocks that resulted in a double spend such that the Litecoins I received were from the attacker's account (i.e.,  Litecoins deposited with a transaction that no longer confirms or was double spent).  Following the successful 51% attack against Litecoin, do I still have Litecoins that I can withdraw (or trade back into Bitcoins)?

D.) I deposited litecoins from a block that utimately was orphaned as the result of a successful 51% attack against Litecoin.   Before the attack I was able to trade those litecoins for bitcoins which remain in my account.    After the successful 51% attack against Litecoin, do I stil have the ability to withdraw those bitcoins?

Hey Stephen,

Thanks for the questions.  We accept national currency wire transfers as settled once they hit our bank account, bitcoin transfers as settled on 6 confirmations, and litecoin transfers as settled on 12 confirmations.  No matter how astronomical the chance, the possibility exists that any of these funding methods could be reversed.  This is a risk that Payward takes and that risk is not passed on to our users.

A.)  No.  You would not be exposed to any risk.
B.)  No.  You would not be exposed to any risk.
C.)  It'd be the same for national currency, bitcoin and litecoin.  Once Payward accepts the transaction as settled, we'd assume the risk.  There may be some totally insane scenario in which a rollback makes the most sense but my preference would be to have Payward take the damage and be responsible for recovering its losses from the attacker.  One more reason to have account limits, delays, link analysis, fraud controls, KYC, etc.
D.)  So, 12 confirmations go by your ltc deposit settles, you use it to buy some btc, the longer chain appears and your deposit is rolled back to 0 confirms.  Your account would reflect a litecoin debt to us and other assets would be held as collateral.  You could withdraw those bitcoin if you had enough EUR on deposit to cover the missing LTC.  If you didn't have any other assets but the bitcoin you'd just purchased, it's likely that all of the bitcoin would be held until the litecoin transaction reconfirmed.

Payward keeps its operating funds, both national and digital currencies, separate from our customer funds.  The bank account you deposit funds to is an account for the benefit of our users--we're holding it on behalf of another person.  Those funds are not available to general creditors.  Unfortunately, there's nobody we can trust with the digital currencies but it's the same thing there.. we keep customer funds and our own funds separate and accounted for separately.  Contrary to what that article suggests, this exchange does have a lot of its own money on the line.  The founders, having largely funded the development out of their own pockets, are in for over 7 figures--we've got a lot to lose.


  

[RationalSpeculator]

The verification process is NOT going smoothly! I submitted my address 2 days ago, still not verified, I submitted my passport and proof of residence yesterday, also nothing done.

With Bitstamp it was done the same day.

Due to this I still did not transfer fiat, because you can't even see the SEPA data. With bitstamp I could do that right away.

Support system is also not finished. First it didn't work, then after signing in (again) it did, but then you guys did not even know who I was when you replied. A good thing you did reply the same day though.

[matt608]

Will you consider adding a BTC/PPC trading pair?  Also in Safari for me the site doesn't work at all.

It's Safari 5.1.9 on my Macbook running 10.6.8.  It looses is formatting and turns into a page with links and the latest prices and text etc running in a single column on the left, I'm assuming its supposed to have a nice design! Hope that helps

I understand about PPC, but I do think it being a proof-of-stake coin it's a worthy alternative coin to Bitcoin that deserves a place on the exchange.

[Dargo]

Rational Spectator,

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing difficulties. Some things are rocky at launch, but we are working hard on the solutions.

The verification process is NOT going smoothly! I submitted my address 2 days ago, still not verified, I submitted my passport and proof of residence yesterday, also nothing done.

With Bitstamp it was done the same day.

Yep, some aspects of verification are taking longer than they should. If tier 2 (address) verification doesn't pass automatically, it needs to be verified manually, and this process is slow right now. I'm told we'll probably have a fix in place for this later today to speed this up. Also, as I've mentioned before in this thread, tier 3 verification is going to be slow initially. But are you sure your address didn't get verified? The system shouldn't let you enter ID and proof of residence without address verification.

Due to this I still did not transfer fiat, because you can't even see the SEPA data. With bitstamp I could do that right away.

If your tier 2 verification is still pending, then bank deposit info won't show up for you, since you don't have clearance for bank deposits yet. This is part of our regulatory compliance.

Support system is also not finished. First it didn't work, then after signing in (again) it did,

Do you have any more information on the failure? Say an error message? This would help us troubleshoot.

but then you guys did not even know who I was when you replied. A good thing you did reply the same day though.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's true that we don't know who you are in Zendesk unless you tell us, and this can be an inconvenience because it can create an extra round of communication as we ask for your info then you write back. Our initial thought with Zendesk was that we didn't want to automatically input customer info in there, since we don't have control over Zendesk security. But there's no reason why we can't have the public account ID automatically input to Zendesk since it's safe to share publicly - this is the solution I've proposed due to your input. But for now users will have to tell us who they are for certain support requests, and the safest way to do this is give us your public account ID (found under Account > Settings).

[Dargo]

Will you consider adding a BTC/PPC trading pair?  Also in Safari for me the site doesn't work at all.

It's Safari 5.1.9 on my Macbook running 10.6.8.  It looses is formatting and turns into a page with links and the latest prices and text etc running in a single column on the left, I'm assuming its supposed to have a nice design! Hope that helps

I understand about PPC, but I do think it being a proof-of-stake coin it's a worthy alternative coin to Bitcoin that deserves a place on the exchange.

Thanks for the followup info. PPC is an interesting altcoin, and we are open to the possibility of offering it, but realistically even looking into the possibility is going to be a low priority for quite some time.