KuCoin Review

A crypto exchange guide must provide reviews of all of the crypto exchanges out there, so that you can find the right one for you. This review of KuCoin consists of four parts: general info, fees, deposit methods and security.

General Info

KuCoin is a cryptocurrency exchange based in the Seychelles (previously Hong Kong). Launched in September 2017, KuCoin claims to have 5 million users from over 200 countries and regions. Often known as the People’s Exchange, KuCoin now offers crypto-related services like crypto-to-crypto, fiat-to-crypto, futures trading, staking, lending and so forth.

The exchange has one of the world’s most impressive trading pair selections, with more than 250 supported coins and 440 trading pairs.

KuCoin was backed by two giant traditional venture capitals when launching - IDG Capital and Matrix Partners. The exchange also announced a USD 20 million round A funding from them at the end of 2018.

Liquidity

On the date of last updating this review (9 June 2020), we checked Coinmarketcap.com's new ranking system. Instead of, as previously, rank exchanges based on adjusted trading volume, reported trading volume and liquidity, they now rank exchanges based on traffic, liquidity and trading volumes. In its ranking with these new parameters, KuCoin achieved spot no. 16, which is very impressive.

KuCoinShares

It should also be noted that the exchange has so called KuCoin Shares (KCS), i.e., its native token. If you are a holder of KuCoin Shares, you can receive KCS bonus on a daily basis. You can also receive trading discounts and even lower withdrawal fees than otherwise. The exchange also states that KCS-holders can participate in various votings and listings.

US-investors

US-investors are not listed as prohibited from trading. If you are a US-investor, however, you should still always analyse yourself whether your home state imposes any obstacles for your foreign cryptocurrency trading.

KuCoin Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen cryptocurrency and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the trading view at KuCoin:

KuCoin Margin Trading

In November, 2019，KuCoin announced the release of Margin Trading Service. Via this service, traders are able to use funds provided by other users on KuCoin to gain access to larger sums of capital, allowing them to leverage positions. This trading method can be used for both long and short positions. Using “borrowed” funds can increase profit, but on the flip side can also result in larger losses than the initial investment made.

KuCoin Margin Trading now supports 15 cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH and KCS, and 35 trade pairs, with up to 10x leverage.

The following shows of supporting assets and Trading Pairs:

KuCoin Futures Trading

In July 2019, KuCoin officially launched their Futures trading platform, and launched a Lite Version in January 2020. Futures trading is also known as contract trading, which is buying and selling the standardized future contracts of commodities or financial assets. According to this future contract, the buyer will buy into assets at a predetermined price at a specified time (named delivery date) in the future, and the seller needs to deliver the asset at the predetermined price at the delivery date.

KuCoin charges the following fees for their futures trading：

KuCoin OTC Trading Desk

In an official announcement of KuCoin in July, 2019, this exchange launched an OTC Trading Desk (OTC is short for Over-The-Counter). Traders can execute larger trades at a certain price without causing any fluctuations in the price of that cryptocurrency.

In this OTC Trading Desk, it supports the direct purchase of USDT, BTC and other cryptocurrencies using CNY, VND, IDR and CAD. there are no trading fees and quick settlement. Users simply need to complete KYC verification and set up a trading password to start OTC trading.

KuCoin Lending Platform

In this Lending platform, KuCoin supports customers to lend cryptocurrencies to other customers to charge interest, such as USDT, BTC, ETH, etc. The lenders only need to fill in the Loan Amount and the Daily Interest Rate (Interest rate range is from 0 to 0.2%) and the Lend Terms selection could be 7 days, 14 days and 28 days. The default lend term is 28 days. The following shows of the interest rate of USDT Funding Market:

KuCoin Staking Platform - Pool-X

The Pool-X is a staking platform, which pioneered a free market that solves the liquidity problem of staked crypto. Traders participate in Staking and obtain both Staking rewards and POL Credits (the native token of Pool-X). In the liquidity trading market, traders can trade staking assets and enjoy a higher level of liquidity. The following shows the liquidity trading market of KCS-Staking.

KuCoin Fees

KuCoin Trading fees

This trading platform doesn’t charge different fees between takers and makers. Instead, the exchange has a so called “flat” fee model. They offer a flat trading fee of 0.10%, which is below the global industry average. There are different opinions around what exactly the global industry average is but we would say “around 0.25%”.

If you pay the trading fees with KCS, you could get an extra discount. The trading fees are reduced based on trading volume and holdings last 30-day of KuCoin’s native token, the KCS, as set out in the below table:

KuCoin Withdrawal fees

Many exchanges have competitive trading fees but then hit you on the way out with their withdrawal fees. Not this exchange. KuCoin charges a withdrawal fee amounting to 0.0004 BTC when you withdraw BTC. This fee is also below the industry average.

All in all, the trading fees and withdrawal fees here are strong competitive advantages against the majority of other top crypto exchanges in the market.

Deposit Methods

Previously, KuCoin only accepted deposits of cryptocurrencies and it did not accept any deposits of fiat currency. New crypto investors were accordingly restricted from trading here. However, on 4 July 2019, KuCoin finally enabled deposits of fiat currency. This was made possible through the cooperation with Simplex. This makes it possible for KuCoin-users to purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple with Visa or MasterCard-credit cards. This deposit method is however not possible for countries on Sanctions lists (such as Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Lybia), nor residents of any of the following six US-states: New York, Connecticut, Washington, New Mexico, Georgia and Hawaii.

Simplex charges 3.5% per trade. So if you want to buy Bitcoin for USD 10,000, Simplex will take US 350 (plus a minimum flat fee of USD 10) for enabling the purchase.

Wire transfers are however still not enabled at KuCoin.

KuCoin Security

You might wonder why security is even a feature that we at Cryptowisser have examined. There are two primary reasons.

First, exchanges store a massive amounts of valuable personally identifiable information. From names to addresses, to government identification details, taxpayer identification number and a lot more. More importantly though, exchanges handle a lot of cash or cryptocurrency deposits. If the security at your exchange makes the exchange vulnerable to attacks, that means that also the cryptocurrency or fiat currency assets you hold at such exchange might be vulnerable to attacks.

Examples of successful hacks are countless. The most famous is probably the Mt.Gox-hack that left thousands of users without a penny (worth $450 million at that time and many times more today). But many other exchanges have faced similar outcomes.

To examine exchange website security, we run them in Mozilla’s Observatory-test (https://observatory.mozilla.org/). KuCoin received a score of A. This is very good in comparison with most other exchanges in our Exchange List.

SIGN UP TO KUCOIN HERE.

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The exchange reviewed above has a large number of cryptos you can trade. If a large number of cryptos is important to you in your choice of exchange, you could also check out the following exchanges: