Kucoin: A Comprehensive 2023 Guide to the Exchange
Jack Moreau
Mar 2023
8 min to read
Fact checked
Introduction: Kucoin is a global exchange located in Seychelles that offers various cryptocurrencies with low trading fees. They offer many products and services that cater to beginners and professionals. In this in-depth breakdown we cover key topics concerning Kucoin so that you can make informed decisions before using this platform.
Kucoin was founded in 2013 by Michael Gan, Eric Don and others, but it was not until 2017 when the cryptocurrency exchange officially launched. Kucoin, or as it’s also called, “the people’s exchange” is headquartered in Seychelles and has over 20 million registered users across 207 countries.
Kucoin offers more than 700 cryptocurrencies, over 1,250 trading pairs and has achieved over $1 trillion in accumulated trading volume.
Kucoin has raised over $180 million from investors such as Circle Ventures and Jump Capital. Its latest fundraising valued the company at $10 billion dollars. The company has over 650 employees with the majority based in Singapore.
Kucoin: Signup & KYC
Signing up to Kucoin is easy and only takes 2 minutes
Visit Kucoin and click signup in the top right corner
Signup by entering email or phone number
Enter the activation code that has been sent to you
Kucoin signup
Once you have signed up, you can deposit crypto or buy with your credit card, bank card, or through third-party payment providers. These options are available in the top right corner.
Buy Crypto Kucoin
And by completing different levels of KYC verification on KuCoin, you will be able to enjoy more privileges.
Kucoin KYC Verification benefits
Kucoin: Products & Services
Kucoins interface is not super easy to use as they offer a wide range of products and services. A total crypto beginner will need to spend a few minutes clicking around to get the hang of things.
1. Kucoin Spot Trading:
Access 700+ cryptocurrencies and over 1200 trading pairs where most tokens can be bought using USDT as the trading pair.
Kucoin Orderbook
2. Kucoin Margin Trading
Kucoin launched their margin trading service in 2019, which enables traders to borrow money to open a bigger position than their actual holdings.
Kucoin currently supports a 5X leverage on Cross Margin and 10X leverage on isolated margin. All the specifics about the margin product offered by Kucoin can be found here. Remember that with the potential for a bigger upside, also comes bigger risk.
3. Kucoin Derivatives
KuCoin offers various leveraged futures that are bought and sold in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The highest leverage KuCoin Futures offers is up to 100x, meaning that someone with an account balance of $100 dollars can trade for a value up to $10,000.
4. P2P (Peer to-peer crypto marketplace)
Kucoin offers a peer-to-peer marketplace where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly from other people. The advantages are zero transaction fees, fast settlement and multiple local payments methods.
5. Kucoin Staking & Lending
Kucoin offers fixed or flexible staking on a wide variety of cryptocurrencies. The APRs differ depending on the type of asset and for how long you lock it up. This is a convenient way to receive interest on your crypto assets without having to self-custody your assets yourself.
Kucoin Staking & Lending
6. Windvane NFT Marketplace
Kucoin launched its NFT platform Windvane in May 2022 with the goal of creating a comprehensive and highly compatible NFT platform that supports mainstream blockchains. The plan is for Windvane to be a platform that helps projects launch to KuCoin's large user base and top KOLs and communities. At the same time, anyone can shop for the world's biggest NFTs at Windvane.
7. Kucoin Trading Bot
Kucoin offers automated crypto trading for spot, dollar cost averaging (DCA), futures and rebalancing via their tradings bots. Users can choose from automated strategies to manually customizing the parameters according to their objectives.
The most popular spot grid trading bot allows users to buy and sell a token automatically based on a specific set of ranges. The bots are free to use but Kucoin does charge a transaction fee per trade like any other form of trading.
8. Spotlight Launchpad
Kucoin has its own token sale launchpad called Spotlight that enables crypto projects to raise funds from users who want early-stage exposure. Kucoin has so far launched over 20 spotlights where new projects make their tokens available to the public for the first time.
9. Kucoin KCC Token
Kucoinhas its own native ERC-20 token called KCS. Holders of at least 6 KCS get to earn a share of the daily dividends taken. 50% of Kucoins daily trading volume is shared with the token holders. Token holders also receive additional benefits such as fee discounts and the ability to participate in the launch of new tokens.
There are 170 million tokens in circulation with the goal of buying back and burning 70 million tokens until only 100 million remain. KSC has at the time of writing over €1.5 billion in fully diluted market cap.
Kucoin has a tier based fee schedule that begins at 0.1% for Makers and Takers. You are considered a Taker when your order is executed immediately and a Maker when your order is not immediately matched. Depending on your trading volume and the number of KSC tokens that you hold, the trading fees can go down according to this schedule.
Kucoin Spot Trading Fees
Kucoin Future Fees
The future fees in Kucoin start at 0.02% for makers and 0.06% for takers. Their futures fees are also based on a tier structure that goes down depending on overall trading volume and the number of KCS one holds. The full list of fees can be found here.
Kucoin supports over 70 payments methods, including Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Sepa, Transferwise, Cash App, Apple & Google pay and many more. To transfer funds via card or bank deposit, you need to verify your identity via a KYC registration process. Deposit limits range between $5-$5000. Currently over 40 fiat currencies are supported including USD, EUR, GBP, RUB, CSY, AUD and many more. A $100 USD deposit via debit or credit card returns $95.5 worth of USDT. A hefty 4.5% commission in other words.
Kucoin Trading Limits
Kucoin offers 5 ways for their customers to buy cryptocurrencies:
1. Fast trade: Buy crypto in one click with your credit card 2. P2P-trading: Buy and sell crypto with other people 3. Third party: Buy and sell through third party providers 4. Convert: Simple interface to trade one asset to another 5. Kucoin markets: Buy and sell cryptos through their order book
Kucoin: Withdrawal Methods
While crypto deposits are always free of charge, we have outlined the withdrawal fees for some of the most popular cryptocurrencies below. These withdrawal fees are much higher than their competitors.
Bitcoin (BTC): 0.001 BTC
Ethereum (ETH): 0.01 ETH
Solana (SOL): 0.01 SOL + % of Total
Cosmos (ATOM): 0.01 ATOM + % of Total
Polkadot (DOT): 0.1 DOT + % of Total
USDT (ERC 20): 25 USDT
Kucoin: Apps & Wallet
Kucoin is available on both the App and Google Play store and have over 5 million downloads with a 4.5 star rating out of 137,000 reviews. You can easily deposit funds with debit/credit card (50 fiat currencies to choose from) and access well known products such as spot, margin and futures trading.
Kucoin App
Kucoin also have their own non-custodial wallet with over 10 million active users worldwide. With Kucoins web 3 wallet, there is no KYC and you have full ownership (and responsibility) for managing your passwords and funds.
Kucoin Web3 Wallet
Is Kucoin Safe?
Kucoin previously had a security hiccup when it got hackedfor $280 million in 2020. This was one of the largest security breaches in crypto at the time. Kucoin handled the situation excellently by recovering 84% of the funds and covering for the remaining part themselves. Today Kucoin has a 9/10 trustscore on Coingecko.
Insurance & custody
Kucoin announced on April 2020 a collaboration with crypto asset custody platform, Onchain Custodian. On top of this, user funds are insured by Lockton, one of the worlds largest private insurance brokerage companies.
Kucoin Licenses & regulations
KuCoin is at the time of writing not regulated or officially licensed by any country. For this reason Kucoin is not available in the United States.
Kucoin provides customer support through email, phone and a 24/7 live chat 24/7. Currently Kucoin has a very low Trustpilot rating of 1.7 based on almost 800 reviews. Kucoin is also available through different social media channels such as.
When choosing a cryptocurrency exchange, it’s important that there is plenty of liquidity for trading. Higher liquidity means smaller spreads which translates to lower costs for users. Kucoin had over 1.5$ billion in 24 hour trading volume and below we have outlined the 10 most liquid spot markets. Note that this number is for the past 24 hours and is continuously changing.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal.
Author
Jack Moreau
Jack is a crypto writer and reviewer who has been active in the space since he caught the crypto bug in 2017. With a passion for trying out new shiny things, Jack is always eager to try the latest cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets or DeFi applications.
