Kraken Exchange
Buy Bitcoin & crypto
Based in San Francisco, Kraken is the world’s largest global bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity. Kraken’s clients also trade USD, CAD, ETH, XRP, LTC and other digital currencies, on a platform consistently rated the best and most secure bitcoin exchange by independent news media.
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How people rate Kraken Exchange
Based on 3 reviews
Recent highlights
Kraken’s reliability and deep liquidity help power our multi-exchange arbitrage and signal alerts, letting users trade securely while capturing real-time opportunities.
Should you trust Kraken? Absolutely NOT. They can do whatever they want with your account, and you won’t be able to prove anything. Here’s my personal experience: Part 1 is detailed in this post: link
Next, I created a new account as instructed in their email. To do this, I had to create a new email address since I couldn’t register with my old one—it kept saying an account was already associated with that email. Minor inconvenience, but I moved on. I registered the account and began the KYC process.
Currently, I’m a resident of the European Union, having moved here almost three years ago, and I hold a temporary residence permit in one of the EU countries. I uploaded the required documents and waited. The response I got was that my documents were not acceptable—specifically, my temporary residence permit. They stated that they require either a passport from the country of residence or a permanent residence permit.
I argued that what they were asking that it's impossible: you can only obtain a permanent residence permit in my country after living here for five years, and citizenship is not handed out to just anyone. I even sent them references proving that a temporary residence permit is an official document granting the same rights as a permanent one.
For reference, my documents have successfully passed KYC verification on all major crypto exchanges (Binance, Coinbase, OKX, KuCoin, Gate, and others) as well as with brokers offering stock trading services. All of them accepted my documents—except Kraken.
Communicating with them felt like talking to a brick wall. After 1–2 weeks, they sent me an email simply stating that my new account had been closed with a tone that essentially said, “Get lost and stop wasting our time.”
At this point, I’m completely done with Kraken. Their absurd requirements and disrespectful attitude toward customers make their exchange absolutely irrelevant to me now.
There are plenty of similar or even better crypto exchanges out there that are reasonable and value their customers. Think twice before dealing with this one. They can suddenly hit you with absurd demands that are impossible to fulfill and do whatever they want with your account. Do you really need that kind of hassle?
Hands down the best exchange for fees, security, and customer support. They have a great leadership team, they are super transparent, and are also not scared to stand up against bad country leadership or external pressures. They are loyal to their culture and to their clients and have without a doubt won me over for the long run.