In short
Both stand out in our coverage for being properly registered: Kraken under US regulation since 2011, WhiteBIT in Lithuania since 2018. Both offer what almost nobody else does — pairs against ordinary money. The money differs.
Kraken means dollars. Around seven hundred dollar pairs here against fewer than fifty USDT ones. Kraken is how we compute the live dollar rate in the stablecoin section.
WhiteBIT means euro and hryvnia. Ninety-two euro pairs, sixteen hryvnia ones, three hundred and twenty-eight against USDT.
Trading fees: an eightfold gap
At entry level Kraken charges 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker — the highest rates we cover. WhiteBIT charges 0.10% on both. That is eight times more for a taker, and on short trades it outweighs everything else.
Kraken's rate falls with volume, but reaching a tenth of a percent takes turnover an ordinary person never does.
Transparency: who publishes what
WhiteBIT serves its network list and withdrawal fees openly — you can see USDT costs 1 almost everywhere, 0.4 on Ethereum and 0.1 on Plasma. Kraken does not publish that at all: it is available only to an authenticated request from the account holder, which is why it is absent from our transfers section.
For anyone pricing costs before committing, that matters: on one venue the numbers can be checked before signing up, on the other they cannot.
Futures
WhiteBIT has three hundred and ninety-six USDT perpetuals against Kraken's two hundred and eighty-two. Kraken settles funding hourly; WhiteBIT every eight or four hours depending on the contract. Our funding section annualises from the real interval on both.
P2P
Kraken has none at all: fiat moves by bank transfer. WhiteBIT has it but does not serve it publicly, so it never reaches our rates. In practice both are equally useless for P2P arbitrage.
Which to pick
If you need real dollars rather than a stablecoin and accept paying for it in fees, Kraken. If you count in euro or hryvnia, trade often and want costs visible in advance, WhiteBIT.
