as crypto has risen and fallen and risen again over the years opportunists have jumped at the chance to launch a trading platform upon which to buy and sell their platforms are winners whether the market goes up or down taking a tiny fee for each transaction we've already covered some like coinbase but today we're looking at kraken the cryptocurrency exchange and how it's risen to the top of the crypto markets here's how it happened first off what is kraken simply put kraken is a cryptocurrency exchange where people come to trade crypto kraken has over 60 coins and seven fiat currencies offering margin stop loss and crypto short sales as well as a dark pool allowing its pro-level customers to trade anonymously in short they're a pure crypto exchange no savings accounts no loans no wallets kraken was founded in 2011 by paywood inc and their ceo jesse powell and it prides itself on security hence why in its 11-year history kraken has never been hacked becoming an industry leader in crypto security they store 95 of their crypto assets offline in cold storage it keeps 24 7 surveillance on its physical servers it offers bounties to ethical hackers who try to hack in and report bugs in the system and encourages its users to be safer by offering two-factor authentication secure emails and security locks kraken's security record speaks for itself but what else has helped kraken to rise to become one of the leading crypto exchanges out there in 2014 kraken was selected alongside coinbase to provide bitcoin trading data to the bloomberg terminals becoming associated with bloomberg added credibility to kraken given bloomberg is used by financial professionals all around the world that same year kraken was selected to support an investigation into the missing bitcoins for the mount cox bitcoin exchange which had filed for bankruptcy after losing 850 000 bitcoins according to regulators all mount gox creditors were required to open kraken accounts to get back their lost bitcoin with many of them continuing to use kraken's service moving forwards this helped to boost kraken globally since they were originally just servicing european customers through a partnership with fidor bank as kraken grew they started to improve their service offering more features including margin trading and dark pool services as well as stop losses and take profit options despite being one of the top platforms kraken is not immune to negativity many describe the site as being designed for more experienced traders with little help for beginners to the crypto craze this crypto craze also saw huge amounts of new traders piling into the markets to invest in bitcoin and ethereum but for kraken ethereum was a bit of an issue on the 22nd of february 2021 the kraken software malfunctioned and dropped the price of ethereum from sixteen hundred dollars to seven hundred dollars in a matter of minutes which triggered a flash crash across the markets anyone who had a stop loss was wiped out for big losses with kraken blaming a large whale dumping their holdings in the market a bit suspect its security was called into question but kraken has only once suspended operations to deal with a ddos attack in may 2017 but to this day it has never been hacked and prides itself on its security that security has given kraken a stellar reputation which will soon see it expand to abu dhabi after receiving a full license to operate in the uae becoming the first crypto exchange to offer direct funding and trading in dirhams against bitcoin taking kraken to over 60 countries worldwide the anonymous nature of crypto makes trading platforms hard to build manage and grow but kraken is one of the most used and most trusted platforms in the market thanks to its competitive fees crypto selection and security with kraken itself aiming to be the best and most secure believing in security above everything