Trading in cryptocurrency offers a lifestyle people dream about living. Stories of crypto millionaires made during the Great Bitcoin Bubble of 2018 still live on today, and the crypto ecosystem is still alive and growing.
With a market cap of close to $240-billion and daily volumes of almost $165-billion traded, crypto markets are a viable option for traders and investors looking for a way to start a career or diversify assets.
If you’re a trader looking to start in crypto, then you’ll need to sign up with an exchange to trade the markets. Think of exchanges as a stock exchange/broker that fronts you the market and hosts your trading account.
There are hundreds of exchanges all around the world, operating in regulated and unregulated environments. Each exchange offers something unique to the trader in its service offering. For instance, Bitfinex has the best liquidity, Deribit is a great choice for advanced traders in options and futures contracts, and BKEX does the highest daily volume.
In this review, we’re going to unpack the offering from KuCoin, one of the newer players in the game.
What Is the KuCoin Exchange?
KuCoin moved its Hong Kong office to Singapore in 2018, only a year after opening its doors to crypto traders from around the world. KuCoin gave itself the moniker of “The Peoples Exchange,” as it takes a focus on providing its customers with the best crypto offering online. KuCoin has 439 active markets, and $63,893,933 USD or 7,644 BTC in liquidity.
KuCoin is an “unregulated exchange.” As a result, you won’t find any fiat pairs to trade against crypto. Unregulated exchanges don’t comply with AML or KYC laws that require exchanges to verify customers before allowing them to deposit or withdraw fiat currencies.
KuCoin is one of the newer exchanges in the crypto sphere, but it pulls a decent amount of daily volume and offers you real-time order books.
How Do You Start with KuCoin?
Starting with KuCoin is a bit more challenging than other regulated exchanges. With regulated exchanges, you need to go through a robust KYC and AML process to ensure you, and the exchange, comply with regulations set by the financial authorities. With KuCoin, the sign-up process is easier; you get to open an account and start trading without the need to produce any KYC.
If you want to withdraw more than 2-BTC per day from your account, then you’ll need to complete a KYC and AML process with KuCoin. Still, the lack of KYC makes it easy for beginners to start trading as soon as they find their account.
That’s the main issue with KuCoin. Unless you have a credit card, the platform does not trade fiat for crypto. Therefore, you’ll need to go to another regulated crypto exchange, like Coinbase, to purchase your BTC with fiat. After buying your crypto, you can transfer it to your wallet on the KuCoin exchange and start trading your account.
However, if you do want to withdraw over the 2-BTC daily limit, you’ll need to complete the KYC process that includes submitting copies of your photo ID, as well as proof of residence, and a short questionnaire about your background and personal details.
KuCoin is slow to approve KYC applications, and they may take up to 30-days to process your request.
Therefore, if you want to start making large withdrawals right away, it’s best if you start the KYC process as soon as you sign up for the platform.
KuCoin recently started accepting fiat deposits from KYC approved users via credit card. KuCoin teamed up with Simplex in 2019 to allow the platform to accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Simplex charges you 3.5% for buying crypto using your credit card, which is a bit on the higher side of the spectrum.
How User Friendly Is KuCoin?
KuCoin offers a mobile trading app for users, available on both iOS and Android. The mobile platform isn’t as good as the desktop version, but it helps you keep an eye on the markets and your trades while you’re away from your trading station.
The KuCoin, desktop trading platform, has some of the best charts available. You get time intervals, and technical indicators to help you analyze the markets and place your trades with optimal entries and exits. The trading platform includes market depth, showing you price action in real-time.
What Cryptocurrencies Does KuCoin Support?
As of April 2020, KuCoin has 439 crypto markets, pairing hundreds of cryptos with each other for a wide selection. You get access to the top cryptos, including BTC, BCH, ETH, and LTC, as well as other tokens like DADI, OMG, TRON, and ZCASH.
Since KuCoin doesn’t offer USD deposits or withdrawals via wire transfer, it relies on credit cards and cryptos to fund client accounts. To allow traders to escape from volatile price action in the market, KuCoin offers stable coins like Tether (USDT) to help traders, whether the volatility while they are not trading the market.
KuCoin supports access from most countries around the world. However, it doesn’t support KYC policies for US residents. Therefore, if you’re in the US, you have a 2-BTC daily withdrawal limit on your account that you can’t lift.
What Fees Does KuCoin Charge?
KuCoin doesn’t operate on the maker/taker model employed by many other exchanges. Instead, it works on a “Flat Fee” model. KuCoin offers its customers a flat fee for taking trades, charging 0.1% per execution. That’s a fantastic fee structure, and we don’t know how this exchange manages to keep the doors open with these fees. Most other exchanges are between 0.02 to 0.03% for trading fees.
Many unethical exchanges offer lower trading fees and then charge extortionate amounts for making a withdrawal. However, KuCoin surprises us once again, providing low withdrawal fees of 0.0005-BTC, far below the industry average for withdrawals.
The low trading fees give KuCoin a significant competitive advantage. The platform also has decent liquidity to handle the daily volume, so you should never have any issues with too much slippage when entering and exiting trades.
If you decide to trade the KuCoin Share asset, then you are eligible for a discount on your fees as per the following guidelines.
Holding a minimum of 1,000 KCS (KuCoin Shares) makes you eligible for a 1% discount on your trading fees. Maximum discount rates will not exceed 30%, so if you’re holding 40,000KCS, you only get a 30% discount, not a 40% saving.
There are no fees for deposits on the KuCoin exchange, which we think is a fantastic way to attract more traders, and with more traders come higher volumes and better liquidity.
Kucoin Payment Methods And Supported Countries
KuCoin is one of the most popular platforms for trading online currency worldwide. They have been serving cryptocurrency investors since 2017 though the founders work working with blockchain technology since the early 2000s. The platform boasts a very high user base that is supported by a large selection of services and supported assets. The low cost of trading is also another draw that brings in more users every day. Most users in the crypto trading world are privacy-conscious, KuCoin understands this and does not require KYC checks on every account. This additional perk increases user loyalty and raises confidence in the exchange overall.
Countries Supported
KuCoin is one of a shortlist of cryptocurrency exchanges that are open to almost the whole world, even the US. The platform allows account creation and trading from almost every country worldwide. KuCoin is a registered company, as such, though it operates in over 100 locations, it does not allow users to create accounts in restricted locations. Places that do not allow cryptocurrency trading are barred from using the KuCoin platform. Any locations that allow KCS is open for currency trading on the KuCoin exchange platform. Security is robust for all locations and regardless of which way you access the system. You can go online via your computer or even by using the encrypted KuCoin apps on android or iOS for quick trading. The sky is the limit and the world is your trading oyster on the KuCoin exchange platform.
Payment Methods Accepted
KuCoin is an ever-changing and constantly growing cryptocurrency exchange. They offer instant exchange services and support a number of fiat currencies. These currencies can be purchased directly from the bank card of the user and of course, can also be made with other cryptocurrencies. KuCoin also announced that as of 2020, they will also supper P2P crypto sales and purchases in partnership directly with PayPal. Additional fiat payment methods have also been added to make trading and leveraging even more convenient.
Deposits are accepted in the form of BTC, wire transfer, credit card, cash, Payoneer, Venmo, and fiat currency, however, withdrawals can be completed in a large number of fiats and cryptocurrencies. The current payout methods KuCoin offers are:
- Ethereum
- NEO
- OmiseGO
- Bitcoin
- Telcoin
- Dash
- Fortuna
- Trinity
- Bitcoin Gold
- AChain
- BitClave
- Puraaelf
- Litecoin
- Qtum
- Bitcoin Cash
- Ethereum Classic
- EOS
With so many available payment options, trading on this exchange is easy. Both cryptocurrency and fiat currency is accepted in addition to multi-country support. KuCoin also has a responsive interface that is a new user friendly with a robust API that integrates with custom setups for veteran traders.
Final Thoughts
KuCoin has been around since the mid-2017 and has grown to become the seamless trading platform that it is today. Funding to get the exchange off the ground came in the form of an ICO. KCS tokens/ shares were created and distributed which user was able to use on the platform for profits, special offers, and even discounts on trading. The funding was a massive success and raised almost a million dollars during its crowd-funding phase.
Of course, with over 300 employees and an ironclad team, this exchange is one of the creams of the crop in the trading world. The user interface is running on is Platform 2.0 which allows for better integration, quicker trades, and of course more security overall. There are more functions, a new API, and even new order types that keep old traders happy and continues to bring new traders to the platform.
Is KuCoin a Secure and Safe Exchange?
It seems that headlines of hacked exchanges pop up from time to time, with even the biggest exchanges, such as Bitfinex, suffering at the hands of cybercriminals. However, we’re pleased to report that KuCoin has yet to experience any hacking attempt of threat. That’s not to say they are immune to this issue, but they seem to have the security part of the company under wraps for now.
KuCoin Customer Support
KuCoin has an excellent customer support team ready to handle your enquiries. We like the live chat feature, which makes getting hold of a representative easy. On both occasions where we summoned the live chat, we had a representative on the other side in less than 45-seconds, and they gave us a solution.
However, the live chat is better suited for account queries, and if you have tech problems, then fill out an email ticket and let the Freshdesk support team get back to you. KuCoin states they try to turn tickets around in less than 24-hours.
KuCoin also has a good archive selection of troubleshooting and FAQs to help you sort out minor issues yourself.
Who Are the KuCoin Team?
Founded in 2017 by CEO Michael Gan, with an ICO of 5,500-BTC, KuCoin is a popular unregulated exchange. The exchange welcomed traders during the beginning of the mania phase in the Great Bitcoin bubble of 2017, capitalizing on the massive daily volumes on the crypto markets when everyone wanted a piece of the crypto sphere.
The Bitcoin Tester Conclusion
Overall, we think that KuCoin is one of the better choices for an unregulated exchange that’s available. The platform has plenty of liquidity, low trading fees, and fee-free deposits. That all spells a win in our books, and we think it’s a great platform for traders that want to test their strategy in the markets. The trading tools are excellent, and the advanced charts help you navigate price action in the markets in real-time.
We like that the platform started accepting credit card deposits to fund accounts in 2019. We’re sure that that functionality will attract more traders to KuCoin. The low withdrawal fees are also attractive, and the fact that the exchange has yet to experience a hack is also comforting.
The limitations on KYC for US customers from some states are frustrating, but if you’re an international trader looking for a new exchange, the KuCoin is a good option.
KuCoin vs Most Popular Bitcoin Exchanges
KuCoin vs Binance
Crypto traders are looking for the best exchanges to open accounts. In this post, we compare the difference in the offering between Binance and KuCoin. Which one of these trading platforms deserves your money? Where should you open your account? Join us as we unpack the offering from both exchanges.