Image 1: Recent inaccessibility to Kraken which happens frequently in Q4 2017

Why I leave Kraken

Being a cryptocurrency trader, Kraken was my previous choice of exchange, partly because it is one of the first & big exchanges, partly because of its user-friendly interface. Being the place to claim your stolen bitcoins in MtGox, Kraken also gained reputation, trust and adaptation from bitcoin traders.

However the exchange seems to be slow in changing and adding more value to customers. As of 1 Dec 2017, here is following disadvantages of using Kraken:

1. Frequent error 404, 402, 520, etc.. which makes it difficult to access the service. To perform a transaction you need to go through different steps and in each steps error could happen, and you need to do a page refresh and hope that the page will appear correctly. It took me 20 minutes just to place a withdraw order of Ripple to Binance just today.
2. Market listing is small. As of 1 Dec 2017 there are about 15 coins and 45 pairs listed. Which means you cannot buy many famous coins such as NEO, BNB, STEEM etc.. and which means you mostly can only trade alt coins like Ripple and Stella Lumens to Bitcoin - in many other exchanges you can trade them directly to Ether and Monero.
3. Kraken is not open to accept new Bitcoin forks - including BTG and BCD which means you will not have them if you own Bitcoin in Kraken.

And that's why I decided to find a new exchange. Researching for several days, I came up with important decision to move all of my assets to Binance.

Image 2: My exchange of choice now

Why Binance?

1. It is easy to make a transaction!!! It works so smoothly that you can make transaction in seconds. It is a relieve for traders moving out from Kraken
2. The trading fee and withdrawal fee is super cheap. For example fee for Bitcoin withdrawal as of 1 Dec 2017 is a flat of 0.0005 BTC. You know how much I paid for Luno for withdrawal of Bitcoin? Luno's website says it is dynamic, but practically it was around 0.5-1% for me, when I sent my Bitcoin from Luno to Binance for trading. See more on Binance's fee here
3. If you pay transaction fee by BNB (Binance's own coin) the fee is even lower! In the first year it is 50% reduction in transaction fee. In next years it will be 25%, 12.5% etc..
4. BNB is actually a good investment. A strict limit of 200MM BNB will be created, never to be increased. Every quarter, they will use 20% of our profits to buy back BNB and destroy them, until they buy 50% of all the BNB (100MM) back. They eventually will destroy 100MM BNB, leaving 100MM BNB remaining. Which make BNB more valuable in near future. Detail of the plan is here
5. Market listing and trading pair list are huge! As of today we can trade in 175 pairs! It is a huge advantage since you don't need to make double spend on transaction to one coin to BTC and then from BTC to the coin you actually want to buy. See Binance market listing
6. If you trade NEO, Binance is the best exchange as it rewards its customers with GAS. GAS is a currency used to run Dapp in Neo network, which is also trade-able. Currently market price of GAS is around 20$. In another post I will talk about how to redeem GAS in Binance.
7. They have active Twitter account to follow status of the site, read information about bounties such as voting for your favorite coins to be listed and receive some bounty. Talking about marketing - their referral program is still on. Refer your friends here to get rewards from Binance. If you do like my post, let's register using my referral url
   Or scan the QR code
   
   Image 3: Scan QR code to register Binance's account

Still not convince? Read a Reddit post about Binace here - They give many more other advantages, I just don't want to repost what they already posted.

There must be something bad about Binance?

Yes it is - and here is the list of advantages from my experience - Binance team if you are reading this please make changes for the betterment of customers:
1)** iOS & Android app are for viewing price only.** There is no tab for trading. However compared to Kraken, you will almost never use the app for trading, because loading pairs takes forever and the rounding of numbers makes it difficulty to make transactions with correct information.

1. To change pair of trading you need to edit the url! E.g. Make a url like https://www.binance.com/trade.html?symbol=XRP_ETH to view price and do trading for the pair. Why there aren't any pickers???
2. Someone said if it is too good to be true, you need to be careful. However, isn't it all dangerous to participate in cryptocurrencies trading activities? MtGox and Bitfinex got hacked even though they are not "too good to be true". If you take privacy and safety as the 1st condition, then buy a hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger. Keep your coins there, when you need to do trading, send the coin to Binance. Do the trading and send them back to your private wallet. In fact, only in Binance it is currently possible, thanks to the low fee of the exchange which make it sustainable to have additional fee for exchange-private wallet transfer.

Disclaimer: Now I also own a Ledger Nano S and I keep my coins in there - I only put my coin in Binance for trading and later will send them back to my wallet.

Happy trading and enjoy reading steem!!!!