
Kraken Returns with Free Trading - ifdefdebug
https://blog.kraken.com/post/1449/kraken-returns-with-free-trading/
======
relix
Am I interpreting this correctly:

\- Margin positions will remain open

\- Margin liquidations will be paused for at least 48 hours

So if bitcoin makes any big moves in the next 48 hours, there won't be any
margin calls and the traders might end up with a giant debt to kraken because
the positions won't automatically close? This sounds like extremely risky, and
if I'm correct, might make Kraken go bankrupt if the moves are big enough,
taking down with it everyone's assets still on Kraken.

> Withdrawals are now disabled and will remain disabled for a minimum of 12
> hours

Can't even secure your assets for the next 12 hours if you wanted to.

Let's hope for Kraken that the coins trade sideways the next 48 hours.

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meesterdude
They screwed up in a big way by not having processes and QA in place to catch
these issues or gradually roll out the change or pull it if it goes south.
That does not inspire confidence in their abilities to operate and secure an
exchange in the long run. But we'll see what they do in reflection of this
event and how/what they'll change.

That said, they've shown communication around this and the free trading is not
something they HAD to do, but a gesture of apology.

in the end we'll remember this: kraken went down for 48 hours and offered free
trading for 2 weeks. Of all the horrible things that exchanges have done or
failed to do, there is some solace here and means kraken isn't AS bad as some
of the others. so, yay for that i guess.

~~~
weddpros
Or they'll learn from their mistakes and become better... Let's hope for the
best !

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donquichotte
They stopped trading again because order books are not displayed properly. [1]

Great to see them back online.

[1]
[https://status.kraken.com/incidents/nswthr1lyx72](https://status.kraken.com/incidents/nswthr1lyx72)

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bitcoinusername
Any docs on designing trading engines? How to process trades efficiently and
correctly? What kind of algorithms, datastructures to use to make the trading
engine scale?

I thought this kind of stuff is a solved issue, some kind of distributed
queueing messaging engine with the trading logic at the collector of all these
trading messages.

~~~
rprime
That's something that I've been trying to find myself, with not that much
luck.

Jane Street Capital has a nice video presentation though:
[https://blog.janestreet.com/how-to-build-an-
exchange/](https://blog.janestreet.com/how-to-build-an-exchange/)

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flavor8
Still getting 522s and intermittent site under maintenance notices. The
trading system being unavailable is one thing, but not being able to keep a
web application up under a moderate amount of traffic really does not inspire
confidence in the engineering behind their service.

Almost all of the exchanges still scream hobbyist; even (and perhaps
notoriously) coinbase is crazily unprofessional given the ludicrously large
fees they charge. They need to improve their game, or when Schwab / ETrade /
Ameritrade finally wake up and smell the coffee they'll take the market.

~~~
mercer
Don't most people use Gdax instead of Coinbase for the 'real stuff'?

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okket
Can't really tell a difference, the site is still sluggish as before. Sure
they didn't just revert to their old code because the new didn't work out in
production?

~~~
dochtman
It actually returns "Service unavailable" when I try to trade -- so that, too,
is similar to before the outage.

~~~
okket
Looks like they mostly improved their trading engine, and, to their defence, I
do not have seen one of the dreaded 520 errors yet.

[https://blog.kraken.com/post/1449/](https://blog.kraken.com/post/1449/)

~~~
squaredpants
I now see 522 errors! That is an improvement though, I guess...

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tobltobs
Site is as sluggish as ever. But my balance total shows me something above
$7,000,000.00 when I only have a few hundred $ actually. Is this a new
feature?

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nasalgoat
I tried to transfer some coins in earlier today, still no sign of them hours
later.

Doesn't seem like there was any improvement despite this upgrade. Sadly
there's really no alternatives for Canadians.

~~~
Avamander
> Doesn't seem like there was any improvement despite this upgrade. Sadly
> there's really no alternatives for Canadians.

I'd say there was some improvement, I can now login again. Sadly indeed,
reasonable alternatives are too hard to find.

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racont
The founder made his start facilitating real money trading (sometimes against
ToS) in online games via sites like lewt.com and d2legit.com:
[https://www.bitrated.com/jespow](https://www.bitrated.com/jespow). I'd say
his execution at Kraken is living up what you'd expect from someone with his
background.

A "deposit but can't withdraw" policy, however temporary, should be a huge red
flag about their solvency.

~~~
dantillberg
I interpreted the "deposit but can't withdraw" policy more as an attempt to
avoid an immediate bank run. It could be a good business decision whether
they're solvent or not.

~~~
pakitan
The purpose is not to prevent bank run. People had plenty of time to run if
they wanted. The purpose of stopping withdrawals is to make sure people don't
take advantage of any bugs that are still present. Like the poster here who
reports having $7M in his account, rather than the expected few hundred.

