Kraken: My Second Success (But Still, Confused)

Kraken's platform is confusing to one who has no experience with markets and trading and whatnot. Even so, newbie that I am, I managed two successful trades and a withdrawal, though not without some hitches.

I described my confusion about conversion amounts in an earlier post. In spite of my fill-in-the-blanks-and-hope-you-are-right trading technique, my first trade ended in a lovely green 'success' button and a small, as expected, balance of USD in my account. Now I wanted to withdraw that money.

I probably could have withdrawn the US dollars straight into the appropriate account, but I had a vague notion that I couldn't withdraw fiat currency. I think it used to be that way on Kraken. Anyway, I initiated a second trade, this time turning dollars to Lumens. I know, 'a sucker is born...'

I entered an 'average' for my XLM buy price and entered the entire balance of my USD as my limit. The order sat around for a while. I was surprised, since I had allowed a little leeway in the buy price, and I knew people had received some XLM for free. But of course, my small amounts weren't good bait, so the order never filled.

Then a red button popped up: 'cancelled.' I was only slightly puzzled, and figured I had offered too little or failed to include a fee. But then, further puzzling, my USD balance was now at zero, and the appropriate XLM balance had popped up in its place. To me, that looked like a successful trade, so why the little red 'cancelled' button?

I thought I would attempt a withdrawal. It kept popping up that I must verify to keep trading in fiat. I thought I already had verified, but certainly I was within the limits of my account's trade allowance, and besides, I wasn't trying to withdraw fiat. But, revisiting the 'cancelled' button, I thought perhaps my funds were in the Twilight Zone, visible as a balance, but not spendable. Who knows why?

Before chatting up Support, I went to Google. One riddle was soon solved. If a trader fails to take into account the fees and maxes out their available funding, Kraken 'cancels' the trade, but fulfills it 'as much as possible' (minus the fee). Fair enough. It worked for me.

As for why I couldn't withdraw my balance, it turns out (I think) I had tried too soon. I went back and initiated a withdrawal. This time it worked, but not without more hitches.

Several irritating things occurred. First, it wasn't obvious that I needed to enter a walket code. I don't remember a prompt, and assumed it would be on the next screen. Then I noticed a link (was it there before?), so I entered the info for my existing XLM wallet on another exchange and saved that in Kraken. Another hitch, Kraken wouldn't let me send to that wallet without verifying the wallet via an email link. This I did, but of course, it interrupted the transaction. Meanwhile, Kraken timed out. I had to log back in by entering my username, password and 2fa, all of which meant toggling some windows on android (highly stressful--I always manage to close at least one window by accident).

Back on Kraken, the annoying pop-up that I must verify!,verify! my ID in order to withdraw fiat just kept interfering. As I understood it, I was already verified well beyond the amount I was transferring, and again, I wasn't withdrawing fiat, so I just X-ed out the pop-up every time.

But having logged back in, I found that my saved wallet info was now available for selection via a drop-down toggle. I selected it, and after reviewing the transaction, I sent it. It showed up as pending or initiated or whatever.

Then I went to my wallet on tge other exchange and checked a time or two. Within about two minutes, my Lumens showed up in my wallet.

Kraken's fees were very low! It seems well worth the effort to learn to use Kraken, but they do have some dabgerous options. They allow trading on margin and putting up collateral (trading on borrowed amounts), so I'm not sure I need to be messing around on Kraken without a lot more learning. And my math skills obviously need honing. Why one platform lets you enter your total balance and the next one makes you guess at, and subtract, a fee is beyond me. For that reason, some of my wallets are nicely empty (as I managed to transfer the entire balance as desired), while others have these insane fractions of pennies left in them.

But... for what it's worth, I collected my silly little amount of BSV, exchanged it on Kraken, and sent it back as 'Lumens' to an existing wallet on another exchange. (One could choose to send to a paper wallet or some other wallet, of course). My Lumens can be exchanged at any time for fiat or cryptocurrency.

Overall, it was a positive learning experience. I lost more in the exchange than absolutely necessary, out of my own ignorance about fees and storage.

If Lumens hangs around for awhile, it will be nice. Stable value, low fees, and fast transfer. Of course, I've only tried Lumens on Blockchain, Coinbase, and Kraken. I couldn't find a way to store it on Jaxx, so it must not be supported. I can't remember what I would need to do to store it on a paper wallet (if that's possible). That would require a refresher course on my part.

It's a shame about Coinbase's tablecloth trick with the Lumens referral. I know a few folks who might risk playing crypto, given the intro bonuses and low fees.

Kraken Confusion

I accomplished my first tiny trade on Kraken. I managed to convert my tiny portion of Bitcoin SV to USD, but not without some confusion.

Kraken gave three choices for conversion: BSV to Euro, BSV to USD, and BSV to XBT.
My first choice was to convert to Bitcoin (XBT). But Kraken makes you fill in three blanks: how much BSV you want to sell, how much you'll sell it for, and how much of the selected currency you expect to get.

Well, I filled in the first two blanks, and the third blank--the expected amount of XBT--came to about 14. I wish! I would love to have fourteen Bitcoins! I knew I had done something wrong. So, to check myself, I changed the dropdown to choose the BSV to USD trade. The result seemed feasible. It showed a small amount of USD, as expected. So I toggled back to BSV/XBT. Again, many bitcoins.

I was afraid to trade. Obviously, I wasn't understanding something. I toggled back to USD. It looked right. I had no idea what kind of fees to expect, so I chose to sell the BSV for a little less than the projected low-end price, kind of a built-in fee, I figured. It must have worked, for shortly thereafter, my ledger showed zero BSV and a little bit of USD.

I still don't understand the BSV/XBT conversion, and why the expected Bitcoin didn't show as .0001 or something. Maybe my amounts were so ridiculously low, the ticker didn't know what to do with it. Trading on Kraken was confusing, and for me, I suspect it always will be. I'm certainly not confident about trading, but after my first (and only?) trade, my ledger seems okay and I did feel a little thrill to know that I must have done something right.

Adventures in Lumens

So, I got an email from Blockchain with a request to verify my identity and get free Lumens, whatever they are. Sure, why not? I'll sell you my ID. So I logged into Blockchain and uploaded my credentials. I got my Lumens. It was legit. I transferred some of it right away to see how it worked. It worked well--transferred lightning fast.

Then I converted  it to USD. That worked, too. It was real money. Coinbase and Blockchain snagged their fees, of course. They weren't too bad. I decided to buy a bit of Lumens, convert some of it to Ripple. That worked, too. Now I can say I have Ripple and I have Lumens. So what if these things are worthless air, virtual coin? I haven't spent much on my experiment. So far, it's bubblegum money, small amounts, worth a gamble. Something to play with. More fees than profit.

When I went into Coinbase, I had an invitation to learn about Lumens and earn more Lumens by inviting friends. I took the challenge. Therein came the first downside. My own lessons worked fine. But my referral link for my niece led her to a seeming dud. She watched the videos, but got no quizzes. She did not get her money. I was unhappy, seeing how I had twisted her arm to try Lumens. So I told my sister to just ignore the referral link I sent to her. Bummer.

Did I do something wrong by getting Lumens from both Blockchain and Coinbase? Did I miss some obscure small print in Coinbase's T and C? I don't know.

I really loved how quickly the Lumens transferred, loved that you could transfer small amounts of it, loved that it could be converted to USD or other coin with no problem, and I loved that the value apparently remains stable. I did not love the bait-and-switch perpetrated by Coinbase.

I'm particularly disappointed that it finally seemed possible to hold a token, get other people excited about it, transfer small amounts of it, and generally play around with it a bit. I had high hopes of getting my friends to play crypto with me instead of warning me to stay away from the dark side of the web as they always do. And why am I so desperate to make cryptocurrency a social thing, anyhow? Wasn't my big gripe about FarmTown the social aspect of the game? That you had to shamelessly beg and bully your friends to send a tree or a sheep? And now I'm begging them to try cryptocurrency.

Well, I mistakenly thought I would reward my niece with Lumens, but instead, my niece is irritated that I wasted her time. And I'm frustrated that I still have nobody in this hemisphere willing to trade tiny amounts of coin. I'm sitting here with a pocketful of Lumens that seem to have great potential (as fast-traveling cash, not a get-rich-quick scheme); but my Lumens have no place to go...

If this is how they expect to promote universal adoption of crypto... it's not working. They're not there yet.

Keeping Current with Crypto

Ever since the crypto thing fell back to sane levels and calmed down a bit, I quit checking my accounts daily (okay, I confess, hourly) and started checking occasionally.

When I logged into Bitsane and imediately transferred out my miniscule amounts of coin, they kind of freaked out and put a hold on everything until I could answer a few security questions.

I very sheepishly explained ro the very human and understanding customer-service rep that I had finally gotten verified on Coinbase, and had almost forgotten my Bitsane stash, and was a little afraid I would forget how to do this whole crypto thing. Yes, I had opened this Bitsane account and funded it--but I had slept since then.

I had no trouble re-verifying on Bitsane, they quickly released the hold, and I moved my small amounts.

I try to go into my accounts regularly now, just to remind myself how it all works.

Carolina in the Morning and Ham and Eggs in Carolina

I've always thought this verse from Chattanooga Choo Choo was a spoofy poke at an earlier song:

You leave the Pennsylvania station 'bout a quarter to four,
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore...
Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer
(Then to have your ham and eggs in Carolina).

     (from Chattanooga Choo Choo)1 

Ham and eggs being the traditional breakfast foods, I think it spoofs this line:

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.

     (from Carolina in the Morning).2

______________
Notes:

1 Chattanooga Choo Choo
   Writer: Mack Gordon. 
   Composer: Harry Warren.
   Published 1941.

2 Carolina in the Morning
   Words by Gus Kahn. 
   Music by Walter Donaldson. 
   Published 1922 by Jerome H. Remick & Co.

Google Sites and G Suite Productivity Tools Work for Me

Wow! What Google has given me for six dollars a month is rather amazing. It's almost too good to be true, so I hope they don't start deleting services or hiking up the price. And, yes, there is a learning curve, especially for fearful geeks like myself. But wow... what I've been able to do, so far, and the glimpses of what I probably can do, with a bit more learning, just amazes me. So far, I've built my site in a WYSIWYG editor, changed the size of text boxes and linked them, pulled up and used files from my Google Drive, added a Google slide show using photos in my Google Photos (can't customize the look of the slideshow much, but that's a-comin', probably), set privacy, added users (if I wanted to pay for more users), embedded pages in my site, published or unpublished my site at the drop of a hat, pointed my custom domain at my site and had it propagate so fast it made my head spin (and with phone support to talk me through the process, too). I went to my personal blogs and added my business self as a second admin (optional), so I could edit no matter whether I was logged into my "business" or personal account. I will be able to add calendars and things if I like. I haven't figured out all the customization tools yet, and I'm still a little lost in the Admin Console, but this is pretty much the smoothest site migration and easiest new-site build I've ever encountered. They've worked hard to make everything workable for hobbyists, yet, I think pros can still find all the horrid tech-y stuff in there, if they need it. Well, I won't say that navigating the Google Admin Console is easy, though they really have tried to make it so. I think the problem is me. But I will learn.

Back to the Real Stone Age

All of this technical stuff gets boring. Talking about my website woes was what got my blog started, but I did kind of switch themes along the way and talk about other things for awhile. As usual, hosting problems began to wreak havoc on my Paleolithic self. I had to switch hosts, a traumatic thing. I crawled back into my fearful geek persona and procrastinated for about two years, until things became rather desperate. This week I came out of hibernation and finished up the process of migrating my site. I'm pretty exhausted now, and would like to return to the uncomplicated comfort of the Stone Age for awhile. I want my Linus blanket. And where's my old Close-and-Play record player, I know it's here somewhere...

Loving G Suite...

Well, I have to say, this old dinosaur from the stone age (aka, "Southern Muse") is loving G Suite. Oh, how I wish it had been around twenty years ago! After pointing my domain name at my site (built with G Suite tools, using New Google Sites), I was able to set up my "business" (hobby?) entity, Southern Muse, so that everything looks as I want it to look (almost; I did have to use their site template, with a big banner and title at the top). But... I really like the way the site looks. I have my display name set to "Southern Muse" which works just fine. I have various aliases set up for my one user (the user, myself, whose account costs $5 per month, going on $6 now). My aliases do what I want them to do: one email alias that I use when calling support or handling the "business" details of my site; one for replying to comments on my "business" blog and one for replying to comments on my "personal" blogs; another one for replying to anyone who should happen to view my website and like my art and want to email the artist. Everything looks great. I do have one issue with my profile--somehow, on one of them, my landline and mobile number are served up when anyone clicks on my profile picture (or maybe not; since I was logged into my admin account, it might have allowed me to view my own private information). I even checked with Google Support to make sure I'm not breaking any obscure T&C rules or ethics by presenting myself, my site, as "Southern Muse," while my profile pages clearly let everyone know who I am, on a "need-to-know" basis, if, for example, they should get an email from me or click through the site and view my profile or "About Us" section. In the little "self-check" I did to see if my email aliases are working properly, each email that came into my (one) inbox had the right look and feel: my business-owner persona had the "D" icon at the top ("D" for "Deborah"). My art persona had my pretty morning bird painting on its little profile icon. And my personal email had the little profile picture of my sister and I in the snow. The name on all of the emails is my real name, not my display name (so I'm not sure how that would work for businesses who want their sales people to use the "sales" alias). It all works well for me. I even found that I can update my old blogs, created in my personal GMail account, so that the profile pretty much matches my Southern Muse one, if I want to. I haven't done that, because I'm afraid viewers might think of it as a mirror site--so instead, I use a slightly different display name and present a little message letting them know it's really me: Southern Muse in disguise. For $6 per month, it's still half the price of my old hosting plan, and not nearly the headache to build. One more disclaimer: if I do my work on my personal computer at home, and log into my "business" Google account and later my "personal" GMail account, I do get some "cookie" issues--some error messages and account conflicts, especially if I have logged in using my mobile phone. Right now, those issues are minor, and I have been able to overcome them by using different browsers to log into my two accounts. There was (and still is) a learning curve, but in general, all is well. Though I am quite tired. So, off to bed now...

Slight Changes in the Way We Post

We have finally succeeded in migrating our main site, Southern Muse, to G Suites, using New Google Sites to build our pages. We couldn't easily move all of our content from our various blogs, but we found that we could make a slight change and post on our blogs no matter whether we were working with Blogger or G Suites each day. The main difference is that some of our posts may say "Southern Muse" and others, "The Muse Herself."

Creating Multiple Users on Windows 10

It took me all night to do it, but I think it's fixed. I have finally managed to create multiple users on my PC (running Windows 10). I have my Admin account, my main account (both linked to my Microsoft OneDrive), and a local (non-Microsoft), standard (non-admin), account for my nephew. Each has its own log-in, profile, and apps. All my files are still there, I am still able to log into my OneDrive and sync it to my Desktop and my phone, and (sighing in gratitude) that annoying out-dated email address is gone from "My Info" on the Account Settings page. If all goes well, this happy state of affairs will continue, I will not forget my passwords and pins, and I will no longer have to see Roblox and Minecraft when I log onto my nice, private desktop. Best of all my nephew will not have access to my personal OneDrive and the files therein. Now, maybe I could have done the same thing by setting share permissions on each and every file or folder, but I like having the separate, customized desktops.

Again, the Nightmare of Switching Hosts

By now it should be second nature to me to switch hosts and edit DNS records, but as always, it was a nightmare. I suspect that Tech Support very carefully avoids the whole subject, unless one is so knowledgeable that Tech Support isn't really needed. I wandered in the dark for several days, calling Tech Support for the various entities--Network Solutions (my registrar), Yahoo Small Business (my old host), and Google New Sites (my new host). I read a multitude of articles, most of which also avoided the subject of DNS. It took awhile, but I did finally find a Google Support page that did list their IPs in the form of digits, which Network Solutions' Tech Support swore I would need. I did things in the wrong order, as often happens. That caused errors, some of which were humorous, and some of which were very sad. I changed my records in Yahoo, my site host, instead of switching the nameserver back to Network Solutions first. I changed my MX records in Yahoo before downloading my emails. For quite a few months, I was still able to access the old emails (not use it, but read and save old emails). I could use my new email. This was ideal, and I was saving some old emails I wanted to save. But something I did today deleted my entire old email access in a second. I think it was when I changed the IP number in Yahoo to point to my new site. Suddenly the old email archive was just gone, link and all. Sigh. Well, I needed to do a data-dump anyway (sour grapes).

Google's Tech Support wasn't sure what to do with some of the cNAMES and things in Yahoo's Domain Manager, and advised me to leave those be. These are the steps I took, not necessarily in the right order: built my new site using G Suites apps; verified domain ownership in Google; downloaded all needed files and images from Yahoo; moved a lot of content to my various blogs; changed MX records and selected cNAMES in Yahoo; put a redirect on my old index page; changed my nameserver back to Network Solutions; dumped many old pages from the old site's directory in Yahoo; and changed the aNAMES and MX records in Network Solutions. Possibly, I should have changed only the cNAMES in Network Solutions, and used a free redirect as a pointer for my "naked domain" (domain name without the "www"). Right now, things seem fine. I did have a few glitchy moments when my computer or phone would arbitrarily serve up my old index page, looking rather pitiful with its now-broken images and links. But I added some redirects in my old index page's meta tags (not recommended, they all said, but then they also said it's easy to do, go ahead and do it); adding a permalink as a bookmark on the main page; and deleting many old pages. Afterwards, my new site came up pretty consistently. I called a friend, and it came up for her, too. I still have to wait several days for propagation and dread the day that my Yahoo Small Business account expires, because it's possible that I put the wrong DNS pointers in there somewhere. Yahoo had told me that when the account expired, it would no longer serve up files or records for me, and I could revert back to Network Solutions. I jumped the gun on that and did it today. If all is well, my site will stay up and running no matter what. If something's wrong, I guess I can log into Network Solutions and see if I can remember what to do with aNAMES, cNAMES, and MX records....

Switching from Yahoo Small Business to New Google Sites

Yahoo's Site Hosting worked well for me for many years, and then came the change to Yahoo Small Business. Whatever Yahoo did when they switched to Aabaco caused no end of frustration. Most of the time, I couldn't even find a place to log in! Every link led to a sales page. For a long time, I couldn't find a phone number for tech support. When I finally did, it was helpful at first. Each tech would give me very specific instructions, have me bookmark a log-in page, have me sign in under my domain name instead of my old personal site name... but these fixes were oddly temporary. The bookmarks would work for a session or two, and then expire or something. And the confusion! Was it Yahoo? Was it Luminate? Was it Aabaco? They used all of these site names and locations at various times. Tech Support often gave me conflicting information. One would have me sign in under my old user name; the next one would say, "Never do that! Sign in under your domain email!" I suppose the real problem is that my site and site-building history covered a number of years. It must have seemed quaint, to Tech Support, to chat with someone who still used the site's Text Editor instead of Site Builder to build pages.

As always, switching hosts was a nightmare, but I have done it. My site is now on New Google Sites, and we'll see how long those last. Google, after all, has quite a track record for discontinuing services at the drop of a hat...