Kraken, a large cryptocurrency exchange, was pulled down last week for maintenance that was scheduled to last as long as five hours, but stayed offline for more than two days.
According to a report in Bloomberg, the company had expected the site to be down for two hours for a scheduled maintenance, plus two to three more hours for withdrawal on Wednesday (Jan. 10) – but as of Friday (Jan. 12), the exchange was still down. Reports over the weekend signaled the exchange was back up and running, although there were some glitches.
“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,” Kraken posted on its website late last week. “This means it may still take several hours before we can launch the site.”
In past updates, the company said it was dealing with “unexpected and delicate issues” and stated that clients’ funds were safe. “Yes, this is our new record for downtime since we launched in 2013. No, we’re not proud of it,” Kraken said.
Bloomberg noted that Kraken is one of the cryptocurrencies exchanges that the CME Group, which launched bitcoin futures in December, is using to price its futures product.
In spite of Kraken’s posted updates, the fact that the company doesn’t have an email account or phone number listed on its status pages panicked some investors. After all, cryptocurrencies exchanges have been hacked and taken offline with zero communications. In those instances, investors lost all their money invested in the site. As a result, some Kraken users turned to Twitter to vent. Bloomberg cited one Twitter user, Victor M., who tweeted: “I’m seriously considering suing kraken. anyone interested as well?” That tweet got 300 likes.
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