UPDATE: The Kraken Exchange is back online and reports the new trading engine is live.
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The Kraken Exchange went offline for a scheduled 2 hour maintenance/upgrade but the downtime has now extended to approx 48 hours. No official word from Kraken on the exact details of why the maintenance has extended except that engineers are working around the clock.
While we sympathize with the pain and stress the Kraken Team is experiencing to get the site back online; it does highlight the potential problems of keeping funds,long term, on an exchange.
Exchanges are an excellent resource for exchanging currency but they are not the right choice for storing cryptocurrency. Exchanges are prone to growth related issues, cyber attacks, network outages and corruption. As the saying goes, “Not your keys, Not your Bitcoin”. What this means, is that if you don’t own your private keys to access your wallet, you don’t have full control over your wallet and the Cryptocurrency that is in your wallet. You are trusting the Exchange to properly secure your coins, keep services online when needed and you are trusting the people that run the Exchange to not be corrupted.
How to gain control of your currency, your security and your coins; use a hardware wallet. When you use a hardware wallet you own the private keys, you improve security and you gain full control of your cryptocurrency.
We are rooting for the Kraken Engineering team as our ProtectingCoin team has been on that side of the line before where 24, 48 or more hours is what it takes to restore a service. Trust me when I say no one wants the services restored more than the engineering team that has been working around the clock.