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

[Dargo]

Thanks for the feedback about our new fee structure. Just so it's clear, the new fee structure is explained here:

https://www.kraken.com/help/new-fees-info

We sent all clients an email about this. If you didn't seem to get it, please check your spam folder. (Our email provider inexplicably sent all the emails out in about 10 minutes when they should have gone out over the course of hours, so many of the emails may have been marked as spam.)

The email didn't address the fact that the new fee structure is a substantial increase for our national currency pairs. As I've already said above, this should have been addressed in the email and I apologize for this omission. We don't expect anyone to be happy about the increase - who is going to be happy about paying higher fees?

It's been so long now that probably it's been entirely forgotten, but our current fees were originally intended as an introductory rate. From the OP of this thread made back when we launched:

Customer service:
...we offer you discounted trading fees, and love, of course—at least during the first month

Instead of offering the discounted trading fees for a month or two, we've kept the discount going for almost a year. We understand if the discounted rate has been in place so long that it now seems like a standard rate. But in fact it's always been a discounted rate that isn't sustainable long term given the resources required to run an exchange.

Could we somehow slash our operating costs and make the current fees viable? Even if this was possible, it's never been our goal to operate a bare-bones exchange service. It's always been our goal to offer an exceptional exchange experience at a reasonable rate. The new fee structure may seem high compared to the current deeply discounted rate, but it's still very reasonable compared to many other exchanges. Remember that it's not just trade fees that matter. When evaluating the true cost of an exchange, you also have to consider other factors, such as the cost of depositing and withdrawing from your account. We still have the same low fees we've always had for depositing and withdrawing euros from your account (basically free for SEPA).  

Again, we always appreciate your feedback because we're always striving to better understand and meet your needs. There are of course limits, however, when it comes to fees. We're here for the long-term and we need to have a sustainable fee structure that better reflects the true costs of our services.

[ICFiedler]

it's more than doubling the fees !!  from 0,11% to 0,23%  with a volume a bit higher than 100,000$ a month. With no volume it's just from 0,2% to 0,35% so you punish the ones with good volume, are you insane?
That's NOT okay!! Why you do this??? What can we do, to stop this rubbish?

Well, actually it is even more than from 0.11% to 0.23%, because your trading volume will go down when fees increase.

That sucks hard, yes. Still, kraken will then be on the level of bitstamp -- and btc-e becomes the cheapest of the major global exchanges. From the standpoint of kraken, this is a reasonable step.

[Serpens66]

The new fee structure may seem high compared to the current deeply discounted rate, but it's still very reasonable compared to many other exchanges.

The other exchanges have to lower the fees, not you raise the fees.

When evaluating the true cost of an exchange, you also have to consider other factors, such as the cost of depositing and withdrawing from your account. We still have the same low fees we've always had for depositing and withdrawing euros from your account (basically free for SEPA).  

that's no excuse, SEPA is free , that's the point of SEPA.  

It is okay, that you raise the fee a bit, but more than doubling is much to much!! And why do you raise them more for good volume customers?? Why?
Please think about that one more time and also the Maker-Taker thing!

[ICFiedler]

Please think about that one more time and also the Maker-Taker thing!

There is a rich set of literature in economics on two sided markets like currency exchanges are. It also contains a canonical model on how to set prices in these kind of markets. The details are very complicated and math-heavy. But the general idea is that the fees for each side of the market -- here buyer and seller or maker and taker -- should depend on the semi-price elasticity of the other side of the market. The reason is a what economists call adjacent complimentarity.

In human words: it is (mathematically) optimal for an exchange to charge different rates for makers and takers, since they react differently to prices. However, the  balance between the fees for each side is crucially important and in reality not easy to determine. If the gap is too wide that is worse than an identical rate for every side of the market.

edit: If you define the market price as the average between best sell and best buy offer, then the taker receives a worse price already. So this has to be kept in mind, when thinking about maker-taker fees. For example, in high volume markets with a low gap between best buy and best sell offer, the maker-taker fee difference should be greater than in a market with low volume (where there difference might even be negative, that is the taker having to pay less fees than the maker).

[ledmaniak]

The new fee is in line with other exchanges, but the fee<->volume ratio is completely out of balance. I am willing to pay higher fees when the volume is interesting enough. With these kind of rates I would expect bitstamp and bitfinex volumes. I'm very sorry, but it is just not very interesting anymore.

[Dargo]

When evaluating the true cost of an exchange, you also have to consider other factors, such as the cost of depositing and withdrawing from your account. We still have the same low fees we've always had for depositing and withdrawing euros from your account (basically free for SEPA).  

that's no excuse, SEPA is free , that's the point of SEPA.

I didn't intend it as an excuse, just stating a fact. For some exchanges, there are considerable fees for depositing or withdrawing fiat from your account, and this is part of the overall cost of using their services. So if you are evaluating the true cost of an exchange, you need to consider more than the trading fee.

It is okay, that you raise the fee a bit, but more than doubling is much to much!! And why do you raise them more for good volume customers?? Why?

Our introductory rate was too low by a factor of two and this had to be addressed. We didn't raise the fee as much at the lowest volume tiers because we analyzed this and found there wasn't much advantage to it. You may have heard of the "80/20 rule," which refers to the idea that 80% of trade volume comes from 20% of traders. This rule holds for us (in fact the disparity is slightly higher). This means that there is comparatively little advantage to having higher fees at the lower volume levels. We wouldn't gain much by raising our highest fee to 0.4% over 0.35% and we thought it was more important to have the highest fee start a bit lower. So, it's absolutely not our intention to punish higher volume traders more, it's just that there wasn't any payoff for raising fees at the lower volume levels as much.

Please think about that one more time and also the Maker-Taker thing!

We did consider a maker-taker model. It's a very interesting model and we may try it someday. But there are cons to the maker-taker model. One is that if the make-take fee disparity is too large, it can actually hurt liquidity, because you just end up with no one trading and everyone trying to provide the liquidity. Given the target we had for our fees, we felt that we'd need too large of a make-take fee disparity so decided against it for now. Another con is that speed becomes hugely important because que prioritization becomes a big part of the game. It can start to skew things pretty heavily in the direction of high frequency trading and we don't want to go too far in that direction. And the focus on speed can lead to attempts at slowing others down with quote stuffing and other annoying tactics. I'm sure a maker-taker model can work well, but it's no bed of roses and a somewhat delicate matter to get right.  

Thanks again for your feedback Serpens.

[Serpens66]

Thanks again for your feedback Serpens.

and thanks for this detailed answer.
I do arbitrage, and the fee of exchanges is really important for doing this. That's why a doubling of fees hurts that much... and of course I hoped, because of competition, other exchanges would lower their fees, instead of you raising the fees.

[gustav]

i traded small volumes on kraken and was thinking about moving more trading there but now they want a selfie from me. I won't produce that. Kraken loses me as a customer since i can not even trade 100Euro anymore without DNA and fingerprint sending to them. Sad, indeed. I think they interpret the laws a bit wrong. Can't imagine that selfie is mandatory by law. We are only trading numbers. I don't need to produce a selfie to trade some numbers.

Also their explanation of precausion of fraud is phony at best. Good luck with that buisiness. I hope kraken reviews their practices on that.

With higher fees + selfie kraken is not a place anymore where i want to do trades.

[V500]

hello. How about just releasing the money on hold?

Here is a lot of complaints. What is the problem on your side?

[kako_number3]

Here is a lot of complaints. What is the problem on your side?

Yes. Incompetence.

[smalltimer]

did kraken just ruin themselves?

[bernard75]

I dont really care about the fees, but i do about FEE.
WTF is this BS?!? Are you trying to make people dependent?

[Serpens66]

hello. How about just releasing the money on hold?

Here is a lot of complaints. What is the problem on your side?

create a support ticket and tell the number to Dargo here

There a several reasons, why money could be "on hold".
Maybe you sent the same amount of money in a short period of time (some days).
Or you are not verified enough. If you are german, you have to be tier 3 and send an ID Selfie.

For the most EU customers, there are no problems, just a higher fee in September. For germans there is this ID-Selfie problem. Not everyone want to do this of course.

[V500]

create a support ticket and tell the number to Dargo here

i don't see why i need to do that. It is enough intimidation already to get harassed for a selfie and to be asked to connect my btctalk-account to my real identity via this also nothing you should ask me for. I want my support-ticket handled without having to submit supportticket-numbers via btctalk. I hope you get that. So i'll be out here in the open and asking questions until my ticket gets resolved. Thank you.

Submitting a ticket-number via btctalk effectively is tying my btctalk-posts to my home-adress, right. And then a selfie on top of that? No, thank you. I just want my money back. I will not be back.

total breach of privacy. Just send me my money back ASAP and don't fuck around.

[kako_number3]

create a support ticket and tell the number to Dargo here

You do know this is textbook selective scamming protocol.

[Dargo]

I dont really care about the fees, but i do about FEE.
WTF is this BS?!? Are you trying to make people dependent?

Hi bernard - The fee credits will be used for promotional purposes only. For example, we might offer a promotion where clients creating a new account during a certain period would have their trades fees waived up to a certain amount and we would implement this by crediting their account with FEE. Another possibility is a referral program where a client might receive trading rebates based on the trade volume of the referrals. We've had many requests from our clients for promotions, especially for a referral program, and FEE is simply a way of implementing this. I don't see how it would make anyone dependent. If a client has some FEE from a promotion, the FEE will be automatically applied as a discount to trade fees and that's it. If it turns out that clients have more FEE than they need, we may offer a market for them so that clients can sell their FEE to other clients. But we wouldn't participate in the market and we would let the market determine price (presumably price would be a bit lower than the trade value of the FEE since otherwise there wouldn't be any reason to buy them). I hope that clears things up. 

[V500]

@Dargo
do you have a statement on the money you have on hold and on the unresponsiveness of your support currently on the matter?
Is there an ETA when you will release the money and why have you been locking it for so long? Thank you.

[Dargo]

create a support ticket and tell the number to Dargo here

i don't see why i need to do that. It is enough intimidation already to get harassed for a selfie and to be asked to connect my btctalk-account to my real identity via this also nothing you should ask me for. I want my support-ticket handled without having to submit supportticket-numbers via btctalk. I hope you get that. So i'll be out here in the open and asking questions until my ticket gets resolved. Thank you.

Submitting a ticket-number via btctalk effectively is tying my btctalk-posts to my home-adress, right. And then a selfie on top of that? No, thank you. I just want my money back. I will not be back.

total breach of privacy. Just send me my money back ASAP and don't fuck around.

Hi V500 - I completely agree with you. It's entirely optional for clients to give their ticket number to me (or Yunus) here. We only ask for ticket numbers in an effort to help process your request more quickly. We only use this information to locate your ticket and we of course don't in any way "tie" your personal information in your Kraken account to your bitcointalk account. But if you don't trust that it's entirely understandable. We're working to make support even more responsive than it already is, which should eliminate much of the need to post about tickets here. Even so, though, it would be good for clients to have a way to "escalate" their tickets in a better and more anonymous fashion. Posting here about a ticket is essentially a way to escalate it, and it's not very well suited to this purpose. So it's something we'd like to move away from.

[Serpens66]

Do you have problems with withdrawing bitcoins again?
I ordered a withdrawal 40 minutes ago, but it's not in the blockchain yet. status is "sending".

[Dargo]

@Dargo
do you have a statement on the money you have on hold and on the unresponsiveness of your support currently on the matter?
Is there an ETA when you will release the money and why have you been locking it for so long? Thank you.

Hi V500 - I completely understand why you don't want to give your ticket number, but without knowing the specifics of your situation, It's hard for me to say anything precise. If you created the ticket late Friday or Saturday, our support is minimal over the weekend (we plan to have better coverage on the weekend soon). You should get a response to your ticket no later than Monday, and your agent can give you details such as the ETA for returning the funds. It sounds like you've already done this, but if not, please reply to the ticket and make it clear that you wish to have the funds returned to you - this will help us to process your request as quickly as possible.