Cryptocurrency trading is not everybody’s cup of tea as it requires years of practice, observation, and prior experience to do it perfectly. The vastness of the business and intricacy does often make the newbie go into a dilemma as to choose which one is the best to start with. There are thousands of portals who offer crypto trading to its customers with having pros and cons of their own. Now to start with, today, I take the opportunity to look at two such well-known portals Kraken and Bitstamp and what best they offer. I am trying to do a simple yet in-depth comparison between two of them covering different aspect starting from fees, security, user friendliness and etc.
The Inception Story
Nejc Kodric and Damian Merlak founded the company of Bitstamp with its origin in Slovenia in the year 2011. The company due to legal issues in the year 2016 moved to Luxembourg. Within a short span, they managed to promote themselves as world’s first nationally licensed crypto exchange platform. This allowed them to do a smooth trade among the 28 countries of the European Union.
Kraken is considered one of the reputed US-based cryptocurrency exchanges that operate from Canada, Japan, and the US and is considered to be the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange in terms of volume and liquidity in Euro. The company is a brainchild of Jesse Powell, the founder and saw the first daylight in the year 2011. In the year 2016, Kraken successfully bought three coin exchanges Cavirtex, Coinsetter, and CleverCoin it adds to its strength and expands its wings around the globe.
Currencies Offered
Kraken offers Fiat current trading like US Dollars (USD), Canadian Dollars (CAD), British Pounds (GBP), Japanese Yen (JPY) and Euros (EUR).
The company is well known for its dealing with Bitcoin and Ethereum to cash. They deal with different cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dash (DASH), Gnosis (GNO), EOS (EOS) and other major cryptocurrencies. It allows margin trading on XBT/USD, REP/EUR, ETH/EUR, ETC/USD, XBT/EUR and others. The company offers 57 unique trading pairs in total.
On the other hand, Bitstamp deals in Euros and US dollars. They generally trade with five different cryptocurrencies. They are Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP).
Unlike Kraken which has got 57 unique trading pairs, Bitstamp has only 11 in numbers. Some of the trading pairs in the offering are ETH/USD, BTC/EUR, XRP/EUR, LTC/USD and much more.
Fee Structure
Bistamp’s cryptocurrency deposits fees are very much similar to that of Kraken. They are low in nature. For trade under 20,000 USD, the company charges 0.25% in general. For crypto-withdrawal, there is no charge as such. They do charge more for some deposit and withdrawal of Fiat currencies.
Kraken charges buyers with 0.16% and the sellers with 0.26%. Kraken offers one of the lowest fees in the market among its competitors. It is a great advantage for those who are beginners in this business. The company charges nothing for cryptocurrency deposits. Most of the Fiat deposits attract small fees whereas some deposits are totally free.
For withdrawal of Fiat and cryptocurrencies, the company does charge a very minimal amount.
Moreover, the fees structure remains the same in both Kraken and Bitstamp.
Security
In terms of security and safety there is a mix bag review for both of the companies, but as a whole, there is an ample amount of scope for improvement.
Kraken has never been under the scanner due to hacking. The company uses ‘know-your-customer’ laws of US to stop any form of frauds and illegal transaction. The company generally keeps the currencies off-line. They offer a two-way authentication of its customer to access accounts.
In the year 2017, the company lost a substantial amount of money due to the sudden hacking of the portal but recovered it in January 2018 by changing its mode from online to offline completely.
Bitstamp on the other hand generally keeps all its digital assets into an offline mode thus minimizing the risk of getting hacked. It provides a two-factor authentication for its users but despite these measures got hacked in the year 2015 (January) with a loss estimated around 19,000 BTC.
User Friendlyness
Neither Kraken nor Bitstamp is designed to cater the needs for beginners in the business. The company has a portal layout which supports and serves the intermediate and more advanced users the best.
Kraken does provide a three-level trading system. The page layout is pretty much simple in nature. It consists of simple, intermediate and advance. Now according to the experience and level of understanding users choose a trading platform.
Bitstamp does have a user-friendly well-designed platform with a portal layout quite confusing for those who are new to trading.
I hereby provide you with the key aspects of the two companies in a nutshell for better understanding:
Bitstamp
- Beginners Friendly: No.
- Mobile Application: Yes
- Buy, sell, deposit and withdrawal method: Credit card, Cryptocurrency and Bank Transfer
- Cryptocurrency Availability: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Ripple only.
- Community Trust and security: Good.
- Customer support: Good.
- Fees: Medium to high.
Kraken
- Beginners Friendly: No.
- Mobile Application: No
- Buy, sell, deposit and withdrawal method: Cryptocurrency and Bank Transfer
- Cryptocurrency Availability: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and 14+ others.
- Community Trust and security: Good.
- Customer support: Good.
- Fees: Low.
Final Take
Finally, we can easily conclude that both Kraken and Bitstamp are portals with international standards and stands tall with a good market reputation. They not only have a huge customer base that they support with good customer care but also have a simple and a unique way of helping the users to do trading without any major issues. There are thousands and thousands of happy customers trading from their platform accordingly.
It is thus a very tough call to compare between the two and make out the winner easily. I feel the choice is entirely yours whether to go with Kraken or get enrolled with Bitstamp for your regular trading.