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Kraken opens classic ether (ETC) markets and credits ETC to accounts

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Last week the Ethereum hard fork went smoothly with the chain reimbursing DAO investors becoming dominant very quickly. As stated by email and on our blog (http://blog.kraken.com/post/147619017767), ETH balances on Kraken after the fork are tokens of this dominant chain. 

However, the competing chain that does not reimburse DAO investors remains viable with a significant community of support. This network has come to be known as Ethereum Classic and the tokens are called classic ethers (ETC).

ETC markets on Kraken

Kraken has elected to support classic ether along with most of the major Ethereum exchanges. Kraken is offering the following ETC trading pairs:

ETC/XBT
ETC/ETH
ETC/USD
ETC/EUR

These new markets will likely be thin at first, so please pay attention to the depth of the order book and utilize limit orders to avoid slippage.

ETC Credits

Along with the launch of the new trading pairs, Kraken is crediting client accounts with their ETC balance if they had an ETH balance on Kraken at the fork.

The fork was at block 1920000, which was on July 20 at 13:20:40 PM UTC. The ETC balance credited to an account will be equivalent to the ETH balance on the account at that time plus any queued but unsettled deposits and minus any queued but unsettled withdrawals.

ETC funding delayed

ETC deposits and withdrawals are unfortunately not available yet. Our current estimate is that ETC funding will be available 24-48 hours after ETC markets open. 

Removing the ICAP deposit option

Please note that along with the update adding ETC markets and balances we are removing the ICAP deposit option for both ETH and ETC. If you use any ICAP deposit addresses you should switch over to hex addresses immediately. Almost all of our clients use hex addresses already, so only a few will be affected by this change. 

Beware the replay risk

If you plan to keep both ETH and ETC in private wallets, make sure you understand the risk of the replay attack and take appropriate steps to protect yourself. For more information on the replay attack see our previous blog post (http://blog.kraken.com/post/147619017767). 

If you have funds in a wallet that can be replayed, you can safely send an ETH deposit to Kraken from this wallet and receive credit in your Kraken account for both the ETH and an equal amount of ETC. For more information on this option, see this blog post: http://blog.kraken.com/post/148071533482