Brokerages

Kraken supports cash and margin accounts. To set the account type in an algorithm, see the Kraken brokerage model documentation.

Create an Account

Follow the account creation wizard on the Kraken website to create a Kraken account.

You will need API credentials to deploy live algorithms with your brokerage account. After you open your account, create API credentials and store them somewhere safe.

Paper Trading

The Kraken brokerage doesn't support paper trading, but you can follow these steps to simulate it:

1. In the Initialize method of your algorithm, add one of the preceding SetBrokerageModel method calls.
2. Deploy your algorithm with the QuantConnect Paper Trading brokerage.

Our Kraken integration supports trading Crypto.

AddCrypto("BTCUSDT", Resolution.Minute, Market.Kraken);

self.AddCrypto("BTCUSDT", Resolution.Minute, Market.Kraken)

If you call the SetBrokerageModel method with the correct BrokerageName, then you don't need to pass a Market argument to the AddCrypto method because the brokerage model has a default market.

Our Crypto data feed provides Crypto data during live trading.

We model the Kraken API by supporting several order types, supporting order properties, and not supporting order updates. When you deploy live algorithms, you can place manual orders through the IDE.

Order Types

The following table describes the available order types for each asset class that our Kraken integration supports:

Order Type	Crypto
MarketOrder
LimitOrder
LimitIfTouchedOrder
StopMarketOrder
StopLimitOrder

Order Properties

We model custom order properties from the Kraken API. The following table describes the members of the KrakenOrderProperties object that you can set to customize order execution:

Updates

We model the Kraken API by not supporting order updates, but you can cancel an existing order and then create a new order with the desired arguments. For more information about this workaround, see the Workaround for Brokerages That Don’t Support Updates.

To view the Kraken trading fees, see the Fee Schedule page on the Kraken website. To view how we model their fees, see Fees.

We model buying power and margin calls to ensure your algorithm stays within the margin requirements.

Orders through Kraken do not experience slippage in backtests. In live trading, your orders may experience slippage.

To view how we model Kraken slippage, see Slippage.

We fill market orders immediately and completely in backtests. In live trading, if the quantity of your market orders exceeds the quantity available at the top of the order book, your orders are filled according to what is available in the order book.

To view how we model Kraken order fills, see Fills.

Trades settle immediately after the transaction

To view how we model settlement for Kraken trades, see Settlement.

Note the following security and stability aspects of our Kraken integration.

Account Credentials

When you deploy live algorithms with Kraken, we don't save your brokerage account credentials.

API Outages

We call the Kraken API to place live trades. Sometimes the API may be down. Check the Kraken status page to see if the API is currently working.

You can deposit and withdraw cash from your brokerage account while you run an algorithm that's connected to the account. We sync the algorithm's cash holdings with the cash holdings in your brokerage account every day at 7:45 AM Eastern Time (ET).

The following algorithm demonstrates the functionality of the Kraken brokerage:

All fiat and Crypto currencies are individual assets. When you buy a pair like BTCUSD, you trade USD for BTC. In this case, LEAN removes some USD from your portfolio cashbook and adds some BTC. The virtual pair BTCUSD represents your position in that trade, but the virtual pair doesn't actually exist. It simply represents an open trade. When you deploy a live algorithm, LEAN populates your cashbook with the quantity of each currency, but it can't get your position of each virtual pair.

You must have an available live trading node for each live trading algorithm you deploy.

Follow these steps to deploy a live algorithm:

1. Open the project you want to deploy.
2. Click the Deploy Live icon.
3. On the Deploy Live page, click the Brokerage field and then click Kraken Exchange from the drop-down menu.
4. Enter your Kraken API secret and key.

Gather your API credentials from the API Management Settings page on the Kraken website. Your account details are not saved on QuantConnect.

5. Click the Verification Tier field and then click your verification tier from the drop-down menu.

For more information about verification tiers, see Verification levels explained on the Kraken website.

6. Click the Node field and then click the live trading node that you want to use from the drop-down menu.
7. (Optional) Set up notifications.
8. Configure the Automatically restart algorithm setting.

By enabling automatic restarts, the algorithm will use best efforts to restart the algorithm if it fails due to a runtime error. This can help improve the algorithm's resilience to temporary outages such as a brokerage API disconnection.

9. Click Deploy.

The deployment process can take up to 5 minutes. When the algorithm deploys, the live results page displays. If you know your brokerage positions before you deployed, you can verify they have been loaded properly by checking your equity value in the runtime statistics, your cashbook holdings, and your position holdings.