Kraken is Down

People are starting to panic because Kraken,  one of the largest crypto exchanges,  has been down since Wednesday 9PM Pacific time.  

This was initially a scheduled maintenance that was supposed to last 2 hours,  and then an additional 2-3 hours for withdrawals to be active.  

There has been minimal information provided by Kraken other than a statement about 21 hours ago as a status update on their homepage.  It states,  "We are still working to resolve the issues that we have identified and our team is working around the clock to ensure a smooth upgrade.  This means it may still take several hours before we can relaunch the site." 

This doesn't look good for the users of Kraken,  and I wish you all the best if you have any coins on the site.  

I used to use this exchange,  but I started having extreme problems trying to get an order to go through,  and then having to guess whether or not it worked.  It was a very big pain and I even duplicated orders a couple of times due to their terrible website.  That is a huge reason on why I switched to the far superior Binance Exchange. 

This is a good time to remind all of my readers that keeping coins on any exchange isn't safe,  and you don't truly own your coins until you have the private keys in hand.  Using a hardware wallet such as a Ledger Nano S or a Trezor is the best way to ensure your coins stay safe! 

Do you think Kraken was hacked or compromised or are the coins safe?  Tell me what you think in the comments. 

To the moon,

@bwells