Nick Percoco, chief security officer at United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, announced that two-factor authentication (2FA) is now mandatory for the exchange’s users in a post on the company’s official blog published on March 26. 2FA, in this case, is an additional component needed to access an account. Often 2FA requires the user, after entering their login information, to also enter a one time password (OTP) received via SMS. Per the announcement, Kraken supports Google Authenticator and YubiKey as 2FA implementations. YubiKey is a hardware device dedicated to generating OTPs, while Google Authenticator is a smartphone app meant to do …

Cryptocurrency analytics firm Messari has added a new index for 10 cryptocurrency exchanges, the company announced in a blog post on March 26. Messari launched a new product dubbed “Real 10 Volumes” on its OnChainFX dashboard to limit its default volume calculations to the chosen exchanges. The “Real 10” trading platforms include Binance, Bitfinex, Bitflyer, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Coinbase Pro, Gemini, itBit, Kraken, and Poloniex. In the post, Messari said that the aforementioned exchanges reported “significant and legitimate trading volumes via their APIs [application programming interface].” The company further revealed that in the coming months it will add other exchanges, adding …

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is expanding its team with new high level hires, according to the company’s blog post published on March 7. In the post, Kraken announced five new appointments to its team. The new appointments will see Matt Mason as Chief Marketing Officer, Steve Hunt as Vice-President of Engineering, Nelson Minier as Head of OTC Sales and Trading, Bob Zagotta as Head of Business Operations and Strategy, and Mary Beth Buchanan as General Counsel. Prior to joining Kraken, Mason was employed by Sony Pictures as Studio Head at a secretive innovation lab focused on game mechanics. Mason …

United Kingdom-based crypto exchange and futures provider Crypto Facilities has significantly increased its trading volumes after being acquired by crypto exchange Kraken, according to the information shared with Cointelegraph Tuesday, Mar. 5. Cointelegraph spoke to Sui Chung, head of cryptocurrency pricing products at Crypto Facilities, according to whom the platform’s trading volumes have increased more than 500 percent. Chung said that company’s average daily trading volume was around $7 million per day in January. However, following the acquisition announcement, it has increased to $32 million per day in February, reaching up to $110 million one day that month. Chung linked …

Cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX probably stored a significant quantity of Ethereum (ETH) in other crypto exchanges, according to new evidence. This claim was made in a report published by crypto research and consulting platform ZeroNonCense on Feb. 28, which obtained corroborating information from Kraken CEO Jesse Powell and MyCrypto CEO Taylor Monahan. More precisely, the author of the report reportedly “believes that there is a very strong possibility” that nearly 650,000 ETH belonging to QuadrigaCX were stored on the Kraken, Bitfinex and Poloniex crypto exchanges during QuadrigaCX’s operations. The report claims that the fact that QuadrigaCX had accounts on all those …

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has posted a $100,000 reward for the discovery of the major Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX’s missing funds. Kraken announced the offer in a blog post on Feb. 28. QuadrigaCX has faced financial difficulty following the sudden death of its founder Gerry Cotten in December last year. Since then, Quadriga has not been able to access its cold wallets where it kept most of the assets, because Cotten was apparently solely responsible for the wallets and corresponding keys. Quadriga purportedly only has CA$375,000 ($286,000) in cash, while it owes CA$260 million ($198,435,000) to its users. Facing insolvency, the …

Recently the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) granted statewide virtual currency licenses to two applicants: stock trading service Robinhood and cryptocurrency ATM operator LibertyX. The state’s regulatory regime, commonly known as BitLicense, imposes a set of strict disclosure and consumer-protection requirements on any business that offers cryptocurrency-related services to New York residents. Since the framework was introduced in 2015, only a handful of companies had their applications approved by the NYDFS: The elite club of BitLicense holders now counts just 16 entities, the two newcomers included. The state has also demonstrated that it keeps close tabs on those …

United States cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has acquired United Kingdom-based cryptocurrency exchange and futures provider Crypto Facilities, the company confirmed in a press release Feb. 4. Crypto Facilities, which began operating in 2015, is fully regulated by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, giving Kraken a major foothold in the European market. The parties declined to reveal the exact figure involved in the deal, saying only that it was a “nine-figure deal.” “We are excited to introduce eligible clients to these industry leading futures and index products,” Kraken CEO Jesse Powell commented in the press release, adding: “Over the coming months, our …

Law enforcement requests sent to Switzerland-based cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift rose 175 percent in the second half of 2018, according to a new Compliance Transparency report published by the exchange Jan. 18. In a blog post accompanying the report, Shapeshift outlines that it typically receives requests from law enforcement agencies for data including crypto addresses (in or out of the Shapeshift system), transaction IDs, identity information (names, emails, IP addresses), cryptocurrency or crypto asset information and more. ShapeShift emphasizes that in most cases it is not informed of the details of the investigation or probe for which the data is being …

The latest Exchange Security Report from independent analysts at ICORating has given 16 percent of the world’s biggest crypto trading platforms an A rating, and none of them an A+. The analysis, published Dec. 18, ranked Kraken (A), Cobinhood (A) and Poloniex (A-) as the top three most secure exchanges globally. ICORating assessed 135 crypto trading platforms, all of whose daily trade value reportedly exceeds $100,000, on the basis of four security categories: user account security, registrar and domain security, web security and DoS attack protection. No exchanges sealed an A+ ratings, two exchanges (representing 1.5 percent) received a solid …

Major United States cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Kraken became the latest to confirm support for Ethereum’s (ETH) Constantinople hard fork, both announcing on Twitter, Jan. 14. The two major exchanges join Binance, Huobi and OKEx in pledging to monitor the event, which will trigger at Ethereum block height 7,080,000, expected this week. “Coinbase intends to fully support the Constantinople Ethereum (ETH) upgrade,” staff wrote in the post, adding: “Upon commencement of the upgrade, for security and technical purposes, we will temporarily pause sending and receiving ETH across all of our trading platforms until the upgrade completes and we confirm security …

Top Stories This Week Altcoin Ethereum Classic Reportedly Undergoes 51 Percent Attack Earlier this week, the Ethereum Classic (ETC) reportedly underwent a 51 percent attack. In the aftermath, crypto exchange Coinbase noted that upwards of $1.1 million in crypto was double spent during the time of the deep blockchain reorganization. Coinbase and several other cryptocurrency exchanges temporarily paused deposits and withdrawals of the altcoin to prevent loss of funds. Crypto exchange Gate.io confirmed that the attack was carried out and promised refunds, stating that around 54,200 ETC in total (worth around $271,500 at the time) was transferred during the attack. …