Kraken Re-Activates Margin Trading
Date Written: January 26 2018 Written By: George Miller
The popular cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken, has just re-activated margin trading today which is once again available for a variety of currency pairs, including: XBT/EUR, XBT/USD, USDT/USD, ETH/XBT, ETH/USD, ETH/EUR, ETC/XBT, ETC/ETH, ETC/USD, ETC/EUR, REP/XBT, REP/ETH, REP/EUR, XMR/XBT, XMR/USD and XMR/EUR. Like its popular competitior, Coinbase, Kraken is a US-based cryptocurrency exchange located in San Francisco, CA.
Kraken ceased new margin account creation earlier this month after launching a new trading platform upgrade on January 13th. There were not any issues reported, but they paused margin trading as a precautionary measure to be on the safe side. Due to the upgrade, margin trading was unavailable from January 13th to January 25th at 10AM PST.
To promote both their recent system upgrade and the resuming of margin trading, Kraken is continuing their offer of no trading fees as well as reduced margin fees until January 31st for all users. The promotion is valid for the following types of trades:
- All un-leveraged trades will have zero trading fees
- Margin positions, open, and rollover fees are being reduced to 0.005%
Margin Trading at Kraken
Kraken allows margin trading accounts in most of its supported countries, and users can leverage up to 5x their account balance when utilizing this feature. To trade on margin, you must be approved for an account and be at least Tier 1. Kraken allows users to sign up in most countries where Bitcoin trading is legal, including residents of the United States, Canada, Japan or countries in the European Union are all welcomed.
Kraken is not the only cryptocurrency exchange to allow margin trading, but it is one of the most popular at this time. Other exchanges that currently support margin trading include Coinbase, Poloniex, Bitfinex and BitMEX, among others.
Margin trading can be a risky proposition, so if you are considering opening a margin account at Kraken or another Bitcoin exchange, make sure to do thorough research to understand the pros and cons associated with it.