Kraken re-enables margin trading after rocky system upgrade

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The exchange is also imposing zero fees on trading until January 31.

The last few months of last year have been rocky for the world’s fifth largest cryptocurrency exchange Kraken as massive surge of new users hoping to cash in on the cryptocurrency trade brought their system down to its knees, prompting the exchange to undergo a few rounds of upgrades to help cope with growing demand.

“The recent, unexpected explosion in demand has been overwhelming.  Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets — an order of magnitude above where we were just last quarter.  Concurrent users, daily trades and volumes are also hitting new all-time highs.  We are struggling to keep up,” they wrote in their blog in December.

Since then, there have been two rounds of upgrades, each stretching to around a week or two to fully implement due to certain issues. Following their January 13 upgrade, the exchange froze new margin positions as a security measure.

The downtime has been frustrating for users, especially since the expected duration had to be extended a few times—which meant that users could not proceed with their trading activities for longer periods of time. Withdrawals have also been problematic. And as we know of the cryptocurrency trade, every hour could possibly translate to thousands of dollars per coin.

Yesterday, Kraken released another post saying margin and free trading will be re-enabled by 10am PT. And seemingly to appease users who have been affected by the downtimes, the exchange is not charging any fees for trading, and reduced fees for margin positions.

According to the post, the system works the same way as before, but only smoother.

“Margin trading works exactly as it did before, only with the system upgrade the experience will now be even smoother. Clients unfamiliar with margin trading who want to get started can begin with our video tutorial and check out our support center for more detailed information on margin trading.”