If you are looking to dabble in the world of cryptocurrency, one of the most convenient and safe ways to do so would be to utilise a cryptocurrency exchange for trading. This is because most exchanges would give you the option to invest in the best crypto coins out there such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Due to the rising popularity of most coins, there are many cryptocurrency exchanges being set up in the hundreds in order to satisfy an investor’s needs for buying, selling and trading cryptocurrency. With so many cryptocurrency exchanges available on the market, it is becoming harder to select the best crypto exchange for your needs. Kraken and Binance are one of the best crypto exchanges out there that could help you with your trading needs. This guide will focus on providing detailed comparisons of both crypto exchanges.

The factors that we will take into account when comparing kraken vs Binance will be including trading fees, security, payment methods, supported cryptocurrencies, customer support, reputation, as well as how easy it is to use and navigate their user interfaces.

We have provided a brief explanation on why these factors are important when you are selecting which cryptocurrency exchange to trade in as they are also relevant in this Binance vs Kraken guide comparison.

Factors to be Considered When Comparing Binance vs Kraken

Background Information

Most of the time, you are able to deduce the reputation of a company through the background information provided by the cryptocurrency exchange in order to ensure that the option you are selecting would be a safe choice.

You as the investor when selecting whichever crypto exchange should check out the forums and site reviews for additional information that the crypto exchange itself may not show on their website. For example, look out for any news on any hacks that the crypto exchange has faced or scandals by the crypto exchanges’ top executives.

Trading Fees

Different cryptocurrency exchanges offer different fees from its competitors from all sides, whether it boils down to the type of cryptocurrency you are trading, deposit and withdrawal fees, transaction fees or even trading pairs between crypto and fiat currencies. Some crypto exchanges charge a flat fee on maker or taker fees while others would depend largely on a 30-day trading volume of your activities.

Security

One of the most important aspects especially if you are trading in the United States when you are selecting which cryptocurrency exchange to do your trading in is security. You should check out some of the well known crypto exchanges’ site and see what security features that they are offering to protect your personal information that you provided and also the assets that are stored with them (if any). A solid cryptocurrency exchange with decent security would usually employ features such as two-factor authentication, hardware wallets, insurance, and SSL encrypted website information. As such it is important for investors to know and evaluate the safety features of the crypto exchanges that they will be investing in.

User Interface Navigation

Some crypto exchanges offer a more straightforward user interface on their websites that are catered towards beginners and people who are new to crypto trading, while other cryptocurrency exchanges provide more comprehensive tools such as futures trading, margin trading, charting tools and the such to minimise risk and is tailored more for experienced trading investors.

As such, you should select the bitcoin exchange that provides the user interface that you are comfortable using and would not feel too overwhelmed or confused by the varied services the website may offer.

Supported Coins

Another important aspect when we are doing this comparison of Binance vs Kraken is to find out what kinds of cryptocurrency are actually supported on the exchange whether they be Bitcoin Ethereum or other coins. An additional point to this factor is also to find out if the exchange offers trading pairs between a cryptocurrency and fiat currencies. This would definitely help the investor especially if they are novices as they would not start out with any cryptocurrency in their wallets.

It is important to find out what coins are available and supported by the crypto exchange, and if they support an in-house wallet that you can temporarily store your coins before sending it to your personal wallet. Finding out the type of coins you want to invest in is simple and you would just need to compare both crypto exchanges and select the best one.

Payment Methods

Another important aspect would be figuring out how you are able to make deposits in order to start trading your selected cryptos. This is important as not every bitcoin exchange out there might support your preferred payment methods. There are some exchanges that only accept debit or credit cards from Visa or Mastercard while some others do not support cash deposits and bank transfers.

In this guide we have compared the different types of methods when considering Kraken vs Binance.

User Count

Finding out the number of users on a platform may seem unimportant but it is quite a major aspect when selecting which crypto exchange is suitable for you. This is because, when selecting the best crypto exchange, a high number of trading users is important since it means that the supply and demand of cryptocurrency on the platform is balanced. As such, investors on that platform are able to enjoy reduced waiting times when selling currencies and reduce buying lag due to fewer buyers on the crypto exchange.

Customer Support

Customer support is another important aspect when you are selecting the best crypto exchange out there. When you are facing any problems or have any questions, it is often reassuring to know that the exchange’s customer support representatives will be there to help solve your problems or answer any questions that you might have.

Kraken vs Binance

Background information

Kraken
Kraken is one of the older exchanges available on the market being founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and is based in the US and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Kraken has claimed to be the biggest Bitcoin Exchange when taking into account crypto liquidity.

Kraken offers its investors services complete with margin trading and also OTC options for more discrete trading. The site has faced some instability due to high traffic loads and blackouts but it has recently revamped its website and services with a renewed focus on security and customer support. Kraken is also one of the best platforms out there that offer competitive trading fees.

Kraken also holds 100% reserves of any customer funds invested with them and as an added security feature, employs audit protocols in order to prove that their customer funds held are secured

Binance
Binance was founded in 2017 by a person named Zhao Chang Peng with $15 million dollars that was raised through an initial coin offering and is historically based in China. However, Binance’s HQ has recently moved to Malta due to regulatory requirements exercised by the Chinese Government.

Only 1 year after it was founded, Binance found itself on the world stage boasting the largest trading volume of any cryptocurrency exchange on the globe. The estimated trading volume of Binance is speculated to be about $2 Billion dollars with active transactions of about 1.4 million every single second, which is an impressive feat.

Even with such an achievement under its belt, Binance has still focused on providing and improving the best crypto trading services they can to its customers which include adding debit/credit cards to their list of available payment options as well as some corporate social responsibility such as being involved more in charity and research labs around the globe.

Binance has themselves stated they employ state of the art security protocols to ensure that all assets held on the exchange are safe. However, it is important to note that there was a hacking incident in which $40 million was stolen from the exchange in 2019.

Both exchanges would be well known around the globe and can be deemed secure in terms of providing safety of the assets and information of their customers. However, due to Kraken not having a history of its funds being stolen before, we would give 1 point to Kraken under reputation, although this does not mean that Binance is not secure at all.

Trading Fees

Trading fees would be an important aspect to pay attention to if you are looking to make profit from trading your coins. It should however not be the final factor when considering either Kraken or Binance in this regard as there would be an exchange out there that charges more but offers a more premium service.

In this case, Kraken has one of the lowest fees amongst the crypto exchanges out there. They would depend on your last 30-day’s trading volume and are based on a maker and taker basis.

Makers are expected to pay a lower fee than takers as makers are the ones who add orders to the exchange while takers exist solely to fulfill such orders. Spot trading fees would range from 0.26% – 0%, stablecoin fees range from 0.2% – 0% while any services used utilising a dark pool would range from 0.36% – 0.2%

Although Kraken has some competitive fees, you should not sleep on Binance as they charge a flat 0.1% fee on all transactions but only apply to transactions and not withdrawal charges. Their fees also depend on your 30-day trading volume which starts at 0.1% to 0.02%.

Both Kraken and Binance use a very similar model in the crypto exchange industry where the more trading is done, the lower the fees become. As such, you would want to make a choice between Kraken vs Binance based on how much trading you are expected to do. Overall if you are expecting to do small amounts of trading,

Binance will be the better option for small investment amounts, but if you are a professional crypto trader or representative of an institution, million dollar worth of crypto investments are best done on Kraken.

Security

One of the most important aspects of a crypto exchange, a platform should employ protective measures and security protocols in order to prevent its user’s funds from being hacked and stolen.

The Kraken website has only ever gone down once in January 2018 and only for some necessary system updates. The security features that they employ include transferring recent deposits directly to offline, physical cold storages which are disconnected from the internet. THis means that the exchange effectively protects its assets from an online hacker.

Kraken stores the bulk of their coins in these cold storages and any coins being stored online are only there for liquidity purposes in order to meet demands. Kraken also offers two factor encryption on its accounts as well as SSL encryption on their website to protect user information from being leaked out, and these are all encrypted in data centers.

Binance recommends its users to keep and secure their coin assets and holdings on a personal wallet or an exchange that does not hold custody of their coins. Binance also offers additional user account protection via the use of two factor authentication.

Binance does not however have any of their coins stored on physical hard wallets, which is the main difference between Kraken and Binance.

As such, Kraken is clearly the better exchange platform since Kraken has never been hacked since being founded in 2011 and Binance did have a history of not really disclosing the exact location of their HQ which could be viewed as a red flag by most investors.

User Interface Navigation

Factors that would determine how easy or simple it is to use and navigate the user interface of a website would depend on a lot of factors. This is due to the reason that an experienced investor may find certain tools and services a no-brainer on any exchange but novices may find it difficult and not required for basic trading.

On the user interface navigation feature though, both Binance and Kraken actually have a clean look and are easily navigable as they both aim to provide an easy method for their users to navigate their website. Both Kraken and Binance however do offer some additional features to reduce risk and volatility of crypto trading such as charting graphs, margin trading and prediction tools.

Both Binance and Kraken do provide a dedicated section of FAQ’s which cover every single question you may have on either crypto exchange and the services offered there. Both beginners and experienced users will be able to scroll through this information to find out the best way they can benefit from trading on their crypto platform.

The one thing that separates Binance from Kraken is that Kraken’s registration requirements are stricter than Binance since Kraken employs identity verification before being eligible to trade on their platform. They bring this even further by having three levels of account verification which are the Starter, Intermediate and Pro.

Verification time for the Starter takes anywhere from 1 to 60 minutes but are limited in the features that they can use on Kraken such as having low limits on margin trading and no access to Kraken Futures. The Intermediate account would take about 1-5 days to get ready while the Pro account – which allows 100% access to Kraken would also take 1-5 days for verification purposes. Information that Kraken would require includes your full name, date of birth, address and also phone numbers.

Binance on the other hand has a relatively straightforward registration process that can be done in minutes and you are able to start trading on Binance within the hour.

As such if we are looking at a simplicity and less of a hassle point of view, Binance does have a slight edge in this regard due to their quick registration process but both Kraken and Binance are fairly even in all other aspects.

Supported Coins

When you are comparing Kraken vs Binance, you would not be disappointed to know that both Kraken and Binace support the major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Binance however supports way more coins than Kraken at 150 coins while Kraken mainly supports over 32.

If we are to purely look at the number of coins being supported by either crypto exchange, Binace would come out in favour due to the number of coins offered, however it is important to note that not every investor out there is able to support a trading volume which includes all coins that are available for trading.

Trading on a crypto exchange that utilises all the supported coins would probably only be relevant if you are professional crypto exchange.

User Count

User counts on a crypto platform are important as it allows you to tell whether which crypto platform is performing from a trade perspective and also what positive or negative sentiments the community might have surrounding the crypto exchange.

In a nutshell, the more users that are frequenting the crypto platform, the more trustworthy and reliable it will be.

Binance has over 13 million current active users which is a very impressive visitor count due to most crypto exchanges only averaging about 5-8 million users. Kraken on the other hand is just shy of having 4 million active users on their platform.

As such when comparing purely user counts, Binace would be the better choice since they have almost 2 times the number of visitors compared to Kraken unless Kraken would suddenly have a surge of users.

Payment Methods

Binance offers the option to deposit fiat currencies into their platform using a SEPA credit transfer, bank wire transfer, credit or debit card or even cash deposits as payment options. Binance also accepts a range of stablecoins for you to buy cryptos which include Binance USD, Coinbase USD Coin, PAXOS, Tether and True USD.

Kraken on the other hand is not as flexible as Binance in their payment options as they only support cash and in-person debit card deposits and only for Canadian Dollars via their Canada Post Partnership.

Other fiat currencies such as US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Australian Dollar, Swiff Francs, and Japanes Yen are not supported by cash, debit cards, credit cards, PayPal or similar services.

This is because the funding of your Kraken account using fiat currency depends on your residency and verification level. For worldwide users, you are only able to deposit using SWIFT through Etana Custody, Signature Bank or SIlvergate bank. There are other ways to make deposits if you are from Canada or the US using FedWire and SEPA but if you are from any other countries your choices are rather limited.

As such, the more flexible payment methods available would be Binance

Customer Support

Binance provides a dedicated page for customer support which includes a dedicated FAQ section to answer any questions that its investors or users may have. Binance also provides a beginner guide on their website on learning the ropes using Binance’s platform.

Other features that Binance offers are a 24/7 online chat feature which allows you to contact Binance’s customer representative’s immediately and you are only prompted with an email address and your question before being connected to a Binance representative. Another alternative to the 24/7 online chat is to submit a request through email and wait for a reply by their representative.

Kraken offers a similar site to handle any enquiries that its user’s may have and also the option for an online chat as well as a request submission form for any queries its users may have.

As such, from a customer support point of view, both Kraken and Binace are even in this regard.

Bonus: Stand Out Features

The key features that makes Kraken stand out is their Cryptowatch platform and also the level of security offered by the exchange. Cryptowatch is special as it allows its users to trade on multiple different crypto platforms through a single interface. Their 0 hacked record is also unmatched by anyone else on the market.

For Binance, it stands out due to the sheer number of crypto coins that are available on their platform. No other crypto platform also comes close to their number of user counts as well as liquidity of the various crypto coins supported on the platform.

Conclusion
All in all, instead of directly comparing Kraken vs Binance, you should look through this guide and decide which of the features mentioned are more important to you. If you are a newbie crypto trader, Binance would probably be your choice but if you are an experienced or institutionalised trader, you would actually benefit more by taking advantage of the fees that Kraken has to offer as well as their security on the exchange.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which is the better alternative of Kraken vs Binance?
As mentioned previously, the better alternative would depend on which aspect you are looking for. If liquidity is important than Binance would be your choice. If you are someone who prioritizes security then you should go for Kraken.

Q: Which altcoin platform is the best for beginners?
If you did some research on the different types of platforms out there, you will find out there one thing they all have in common is that they are all convenient to use although some platforms are more beginner friendly than others, it would be unlikely that any problems will be encountered when trading on a top-rated platform.

Q: How do I select the best crypto exchange?
In order to select the best crypto platform, you should first find out the main features all the top platforms are currently offering that are specifically important to you. For example, a good platform that you want to trade on such as Binance or Bittrex should have the best security features, or if you are mainly looking to trade on the main cryptocurrencies, the number of currencies should not matter too much for you.

In short, list out your requirements and select the best crypto that suits or meets those requirements.