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Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges has been down for two days and its users are worried.
@krakensupport I understand everyone's frustration as I am getting very frustrated myself. I have always trusted my funds on Kraken (although now I am getting nervous lol) But the fact that I can't trade on my main trading account is hurting me during this price action!
— Mathew Stover (@stoves_17) January 13, 2018
The San Francisco-based company’s went offline at 9am PST on Wednesday for maintenance that was initially scheduled to last two hours, plus an additional two to three hours for withdrawals. They made the following announcement.
“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,” according to a status update on Kraken’s website posted seven hours ago. “This means it may still take several hours before we can relaunch the site.”
Two days later and they have just released the following maintenance update
@krakenfx just released a new update on the maintenance. Are you a #Kraken user? Are you worried? pic.twitter.com/47Ev9gnWLZ
— Henry Joseph-Grant (@speirin) January 13, 2018
and users have received the following email from Kraken support
Just received this from #KrakenSupport #kraken #krakendown pic.twitter.com/hHAMbAgru2
— Nicolas Dimanow ???? (@conidim) January 13, 2018
Time will tell if Kraken’s delay in going back online are simply understandable growing pains experienced by its peers and fellow popular websites such as Coinbase who have frequently crashed or slowed down in the past few months as they’ve been unable to handle the increased traffic coming from the growing number of investors trying to cash in on the crypto boom. The developer community have voiced they think this is the case.
What happened at Kraken has all the hallmarks of a "database rebuild." This is when an old-school SQL database gets messed up and needs to be repopulated. For reasons unclear, this is the slowest operation a computer can perform. https://t.co/uj1nCtFcnt
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) January 13, 2018
So hopefully Kraken is a victim of their own success and it’s users wont lose their cryptocurrency a la Mt.Gox who filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after losing hundreds of thousands of its clients bitcoins rumoured to amount to around $450 Billion, ouch!
Some users are already fearing the worst
If the Kraken Exchange isn't working perfectly when I wake up tomorrow morning, I am calling the FBI to request that they get involved in this situation. Your recent status update is unprofessional and shocking. PS – I am 25+ year lawyer. #kraken @krakensupport @krakenfx
— Clay Crawford (@Crawfordtx) January 12, 2018
Kraken better be supporting the bitcoin cash to bitcoin candy fork because this ridiculous 2 day maintenance prevented me from being able to transfer my BCH to my hard wallet. If Kraken does not support it I will sue Kraken and start a class action with all users who lost out…
— Charles Zivin (@CZivin) January 13, 2018
I hope for the sakes of Kraken users that the site is back up and running in the near future and nobody loses any of their Bitcoin, Ethereum or other Altcoins.
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