KuCoin Review

KuCoin has turned into one of the top cryptocurrency exchanges, used by a vast number of traders. The platform offers a wide range of crypto services, which include futures and margin trading exchange, the opportunity to earn passive income through staking and lending, a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace, crowdfunding of brand new crypto projects (IEOs), and much more. KuCoin provides traders with high liquidity, a great number of cryptocurrencies, plus low trading fees.  

✓ Low fees
✓ User-friendly interface
✓ A great number of altcoins
✓ Opportunity to buy crypto with fiat
✓ Non-mandatory KYC
✓ Staking opportunity

✗ No trading pairs with currencies
✗ No option for bank deposits
✗ The customer support rarely answer via chat
✗ Could be complicated for beginner-traders

Funds for the development of KuCoin were raised through an ICO, which took place in 2017. The KuCoin team sold their native KuCoin Shares (KCS) tokens, which have a number of utilities – from enjoying special offers through trading discounts to receiving part of the exchange’s profits. The crowdsale was a success, as KuCoin managed to raise almost USD 20 million in Bitcoin (at the time) for 100 million KCS. The price for a single KCS during the ICO was 0.000055 BTC.

Today, the company’s headquarters are in the Seychelles. According to the company itself, it employs over 300 people worldwide. Today, KuCoin provides services in the majority of the countries in the world, such as Turkey, Brazil, Japan, and many others. The platform has been translated into 17 languages, which include English, Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), German, Spanish, Turkish, etc.

Verifying your account on KuCoin is optional, especially if you trade with small volumes. In other words, it is not mandatory to verify your identity in order to trade, however, verified users can enjoy greater benefits, such as enjoying higher daily withdrawal limits or a more simple account recovery process in case you forget your password or lose your two-factor authentication device.

KuCoin presents its users with three levels of verification:

• Unverified account. All it requires is an email verification, which allows you to withdraw up to 2 BTC every 24 hours.
• Verified Individual account. You’d need to submit an ID, for instance, a passport, and your country of residence. Your withdrawal limit would then increase to 100 BTC every 24 hours.
• Verified institutional account – allowing you to withdraw up to 500 BTC every 24-hour period.

Compared to other altcoin exchanges, KuCoin offers some of the lowest fees possible. Spot trades, for instance, are subject to a fixed fee of 0.1%. The costs are set to decrease according to your trading volume over a period of 30 days or the amount of KuCoin Shares (KCS) you hold – which guarantees you an additional discount on your trading fees. Furthermore, you can use KCS tokens if you’d wish to cover part of your trading fees via KCS Pay.

Keep in mind that more often than not, the KuCoin withdrawal fees are similar to Binance’s, which is famous for having the lowest fees on the market. If you’d like to know the exact fee for withdrawing for each cryptocurrency, you’d need to visit KuCoin’s fee structure page.

The exchange supports several ways of purchasing crypto with fiat that include direct bank card purchases through the Banxa, Simplex, and PayMIR integrations, a P2P desk, as well as a fast buy feature. Each payment method presents a different transaction fee that can go as high as 5 – 7%. Simplex’s fee usually amounts to 3.5% per purchase and Baxa charges 4 – 6% on top of the amount that is being transacted.

The exchange’s creation was actually funded with KuCoin Shares (KCS) as 200 million KCS were issued and split among founders, the private and the regular investors. These funds were locked up in two consecutive periods to prevent them from being immediately sold on the market. The second unlocking is scheduled to take place on September 2nd, 2021.

The Futures platform lets users trade Bitcoin and Tether (USDT) margin contracts that go as high as 100x leverage. What this means is that you are able to trade up to 10,000$ worth of contracts with merely 100$ in your account. The KuCoin Futures have two versions, of which is for beginners (the so-called lite version) and another one for the traders who are more experienced (the pro version).

With KuCoin’s margin trading you can currently long or short USDT, BTC, as well as ETH denominated market pairs that can reach a leverage of up to 10x. The pairs include most of the popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, Ethereum, XRP, EOS, Tron, Cardano, and others.

The KuCoin P2P marketplace allows users to directly buy from and sell to other merchants cryptocurrencies like USDT, BTC or ETH. It supports a variety of payment methods that include PayPal, wire transfers, and other popular payment methods. The fiat currencies you can trade with include USD, IDR, and CAD. However, trading via the KuCoin P2P desk, requires you to verify your KuCoin account.

The KuCoin instant exchange makes the instant crypto-to-crypto exchanges possible. It facilitates swapping Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH) and other coins for Tether (USDT) and Bitcoin (BTC). The exchange service automatically looks for the best possible exchange rates and the best news is that currently those who use the instant-exchange aren’t charged for it.

With KuCoin you can also take advantage of a number of staking and lending programs that let you enjoy a passive income from the digital assets that you hold:

KuCoin Lend
You are able to monetize the assets that you hold by lending them out for the funding of margin accounts. The loans’ duration is 7, 14, or 28 days, and thanks to your holdings you can earn an interest rate of up to 12% per year. Right now, the lending service accepts cryptocurrencies among which are USDT, BTC, ETH, XRP, EOS, ADA, etc.

Pool-X
Pool-X is a proof-of-stake (PoS) mining pool through which you can earn from staking. It offers high yield for staking EOS, ZIL, KCS, XTZ, TRX, and lots of other cryptocurrencies.

Soft staking
As a part of Pool-X, soft staking allows you to be rewarded for holding crypto. You are able to earn up to 15% yield on an annual basis with minimum deposit requirements.

Furthermore, KuCoin has developed its own initial exchange offering (IEO) launchpad, which is called the KuCoin Spotlight. Unlike the ICO which doesn’t guarantee investors that the token they invest in will ever reach an exchange, IEOs reassures them that the new asset will be directly tradeable and hence will be subject to actual liquidity. On the KuCoin Spotlight you are able to invest in new cryptocurrencies that have KuCoin’s support. The exchange users have already funded seven IEOs, such as Tokoin, Bitbns, etc. If you would like to partake in KuCoin’s IEOs, you would need to verify your account. The tokens during the IEO are usually sold for KuCoin Shares (KCS), which boosts their utility even further.

On September 25th, 2020, hackers managed to steal more than $275 million worth of assets from KuCoin in one of the largest ever cryptocurrency exchange hacks. According to the KuCoin team the hack was successful due to a leakage of KuCoin hot wallets’ private keys. In November 2020 KuCoin’s CEO said that 84% of the crypto funds stolen during the cyberattack had been recovered.

Like most exchanges out there, KuCoin has no fees on deposits and different fixed fees for withdrawals, depending on the type of crypto you’d like to withdraw. The time to process a transaction usually depends on the asset’s blockchain, but they tend to be executed within 1 hour, so withdrawals normally reach the users’ wallets in 2-3 hours. More significant withdrawals are processed manually by the platform staff, so in case you would like to withdraw greater amounts of crypto, you may have to wait up to 8 hours sometimes.

KuCoin has had an impressive start and the fact that it has managed to withstand the grave hack of 2020 and to improve on its security is also praiseworthy. The exchange is now one of the most recognizable platforms when it comes to liquidity and opportunities to make money. Those who want to have access to coins with smaller market capitalization are at the right place. Nonetheless, do keep in mind that it is among the least regulated centralized cryptocurrency exchanges and that customer support can oftentimes seem non-existent.

Nothing on this website should be perceived as financial, investment or trading advice. We urge you to do your own research prior to investing and we highly recommend that you consult a certified financial advisor.