KuCoin Review For 2024

KuCoin is available in over 200 countries, and it is often one of the first exchanges to list emerging and trending coins—making it highly attractive to investors looking to get in early on the latest crypto trading trends.

In this KuCoin review, we dive deep into what KuCoin offers its users, highlighting both the positives and negatives of an exchange that states: “1 out of 4 crypto holders worldwide is with KuCoin.”

What KuCoin Does Well

We found that KuCoin has a global presence, offers over 840 cryptocurrencies, and accepts deposits in over 50 currencies through more than 70 deposit methods.

It offers competitively low spot trading fees that are reduced for high volume traders, and is often one of the first major exchanges to list new and trending tokens—making it an excellent platform for traders looking to trade the trend.

KuCoin is great for advanced traders, with a fully customizable trading interface, that integrates charts and charting tools from TradingView and offers intelligent token categorization to help users navigate the markets. KuCoin has a feature-rich mobile app for traders to access and make trades on the go, and also features numerous trading bots for users to use across Spot, Futures, Margin, and Leverage trading markets.

Overall, KuCoin is best for those looking for a feature-rich platform that gives them all the tools and information they need to make trades on the most well-established and hottest  cryptocurrencies—anywhere, anytime.

KuCoin at a Glance

What Cryptocurrencies Can You Trade on KuCoin?

In our review of KuCoin, we found that the platform offers over 700 coins to its users, through 1,300 trading pairs, including all the top and most popular coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, ChainLink, Litecoin, and Ripple. It also features well established meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, and some of the most popular stablecoins, including USDT and USDC.

The KuCoin exchange employs a third party to conduct proof-of-reserve reporting and holds fully backed reserves of BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC.

Comparing KuCoin to some other top cryptocurrency exchanges, we find that the exchange has one of the highest number of tradable coins, with big names like Binance (350+ cryptos), Coinbase (250+ cryptos), and Kraken (200+ cryptos) offering considerably less variety than KuCoin. But it is beaten to the top by MEXC (1600+ cryptos).

KuCoin Spot Trading Fees

On the surface, KuCoin Global offers a simple fee structure for spot trading cryptocurrencies, with a spot trading fee of 0.10% per order.

However, those who trade upwards of 50 BTC every 30 days can get a discount on KuCoin crypto trading fees. Depending on a user’s trading volume, they are entered into one of 12 VIP Levels. The reduced KuCoin fees and levels are detailed in the table below.

Users can also pay their trading fees in the platform’s token, KuCoin Token ($KCS), for a 20% discount on their trading fees at all VIP Levels (Maker Fees LV8 and up are exempt).

KuCoin Futures

On the KuCoin exchange traders can trade delivery Futures and perpetual Futures. Fees for trading on KuCoin futures markets are 0.06% for the taker and 0.02% for the maker, with a lower fee for makers to incentivize them to add liquidity to the market. These fees are also discounted through 12 VIP Levels, dependent on a user’s 30-day trading volume; with LV1 being ≥200 BTC in 30 days, and LV12 being ≥160,000 BTC.

Unfortunately, the KuCoin exchange doesn’t offer a demo account to allow users to practice and experiment with Futures trading before doing it themselves—as many competitors do.

They also don’t offer any social trading features, such as copy trading, which allows users to automatically copy the trades of more experienced traders.

Trading Experience

The KuCoin exchange offers a slick interface for viewing all the available markets, which not unlike many coin aggregators, e.g., CoinMarketCap. It also allows users to view tokens in intelligent categories and view multiple markets at a glance.

From here users can enter the trading interface for their desired trading pair. By default, the trading interface shows charts—integrated from TradingView to provide charts and advanced tooling to users—along with a live order book. This interface is fully customizable, and users can add and remove different elements as they wish.

Different market views can be tabbed at the top of the interface and up to four can be displayed at any one time, providing an information-rich trading experience.

Users can search for cryptos in a search bar that also contains intelligent categories that allow users to browse tokens in similar categories, and effortlessly switch between markets—both Spot and Future—as well as access the numerous trading bots that KuCoin has for users to take advantage of.

KuCoin Wallet

The KuCoin wallet offers a detailed yet easy to navigate overview of the assets held in a user’s account. Users have numerous accounts: Funding, Trading, Margin, Futures, Trading Bot, and Finance; between which they can transfer funds.

When in these accounts users can click a handy little trade button next to an asset to jump straight into the trading interface to interact with that asset on that market.

Mobile App

The KuCoin app offers many of the same features as the desktop exchange, all in a sleek and easy-to-use design that has earned 4.4 stars on the Google Play store and 4.7 stars on the Apple App Store.

On the KuCoin App users can trade on both Spot and Futures markets, access numerous trading bots, and transfer money between their trading accounts as they would on the browser-based KuCoin exchange.

For beginners who may be overwhelmed by the level of information in the desktop and mobile app interfaces, there is a simple “Convert” tab that offers a slimline view and allows users to simply exchange one asset for another in an uncluttered manner.

Staking on KuCoin

Users of KuCoin can stake various tokens through KuCoin Earn. Here there are flexible and locked staking options, available in Low Risk and High Yield categories. APYs vary by the currency staked and the staking period, with locked staking offering a higher APY than flexible staking—there are also special staking offers for new users.

Low Risk staking options simply offer a variable APY on the staked token and are offered for hundreds of cryptocurrencies.

For the High Yield options (which are also higher risk) the APY varies by the style of investment product selected and is also dependent on the performance of the underlying asset.

For example, the Shark Fin structured investment product works like traditional options. The user’s principle (i.e. deposit) is protected and their APY is dependent on the performance of the underlying asset. If they select a Bearish product then their APY will rise if the price goes down, with the opposite being true for Bullish products.

In total, investors can start staking more than 40 cryptos on KuCoin.

KuCoin Payment Methods

KuCoin boasts over 70 payment methods for over 50 currencies. Payment methods include:

• Credit and debit card
• Bank transfers
• SEPA
• PayPal
• Google Pay
• Third-Party Providers, e.g., Banxa and Simplex

Using the KuCoin instant buy service requires creating an account and completing KYC. Once done the crypto should be in the account in minutes. KuCoin also offers access to a peer-to-peer marketplace that allows users to buy crypto directly from others in a fee-free manner.

Minimum Deposit

Minimum deposits vary by cryptocurrency, for some of the most popular cryptocurrencies these are:

For those looking to fund their account by buying crypto on KuCoin, there is a minimum purchase of $10, regardless of the method used to purchase it.

Withdrawal Times

Withdrawals on KuCoin are typically processed in less than 30 minutes, but this also depends on the blockchain asset and the congestion on that particular blockchain at the time. Larger deposits may take longer to be confirmed for security issues.

Withdrawal fees vary by coin and can be found on the KuCoin Withdraw Fee Rate page.

KuCoin Customer Support

KuCoin’s customer support is all online, coming in the form of a 24/7 virtual assistant and a ticket request system, but obtaining the support of a real customer representative seems to be extremely difficult—according to reviews posted on KuCoin’s TrustPilot listing.

In fact, the exchange has no TrustPilot rating as they have been deemed to have breached the platform’s guidelines with the use of fake reviews. Of the 925 KuCoin reviews remaining on TrustPilot—after the removal of fake reviews—76% of them are 1 star, with an overall rating of 1.6 stars.

When compared to other crypto exchanges, however, this seems to be the industry standard, with the following rating found on TrustPilot for the biggest exchanges:

• Binance (2.1 stars)
• Coinbase (1.5 stars)
• Kraken (2.1 stars)
• MEXC (2.0 stars)

KuCoin does offer a large FAQ section on its website, and has a Community Section that lists its social accounts for numerous languages, where users can also seek assistance.

Is KuCoin Safe? Licensing & Security

While KuCoin is available in over 200 countries the reality is that it is not licensed in the majority of these locations. The KuCoin exchange is not licensed in the US, UK, Australia, or Europe. Additionally, KuCoin has been placed on a warning list in the UK and the Dutch central bank has warned users that it is operating in the Netherlands without being registered.

KuCoin is based and licensed in the Seychelles, by the FSA, which allows it to operate globally as a digital asset exchange. Outside that it is licensed in Malta, by the MFSA and the Cayman Islands, by the CIMA, which allows it to service the residents of those countries. While the exchange is licensed by a handful of bodies, it is not regulated by any reputable bodies or agencies.

When a cryptocurrency exchange is licensed in a country it means that it complies with the anti-money laundering (AML) requirements of that country and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) rules of that country. It also means that they comply with stringent security measures and compliance standards. This all means that licensed exchanges offer a much safer environment for traders.

In terms of overall security, the KuCoin exchange has regular proof of reserve audits conducted by third parties to ensure that customers’ reserves of specific assets, BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDT, are backed.

These assets are stored in a mix of cold, warm, and hot wallets, which are protected by multisig technology. The wallet addresses are monitored 24/7 with suspicious behavior alerts set up to warn the KuCoin team.

KuCoin’s security history is not without its blemishes, with KuCoin’s hot wallet hacked for $280 million in 2020 and, most recently, in April 2023, their Twitter account was hacked and users lost over $22k in USDT to the hacker’s fraudulent tweets.

Where Could KuCoin Improve

KuCoin could definitely improve its beginner trader experience, as it currently offers few to no tools—such as demo accounts or copy trading features—to help beginners get to grips with trading cryptocurrencies. While it has a huge customizable interface, it is not targeted at the beginner and those just starting on their trading journey are very likely to be overwhelmed by what is on offer.

The KuCoin exchange could also improve the customer experience, specifically its customer support, which is mentioned as a pain point numerous times in the reviews on TrustPilot and mobile app stores.

Finally, to gain the trust of users and improve their overall security, KuCoin should also look at being regulated by some of the major regulators around the globe, such as FinCEN in the USA, the FCA in the UK, CySEC in Europe, and the FCA in Australia, which would also open up more of their services to residents in these markets.

Our Methodology

When reviewing and ranking exchanges we methodically assess each platform, assigning each feature and aspect of a platform a specific weighting that is used to calculate its final position and score when lined up against its competitors.

The factors we take into account include, but are not limited to:

• Asset security
• Licenses held
• List of tokens available
• Customer service
• Advanced trading features and markets
• Staking services
• Education resources

Conclusion

In this comprehensive KuCoin review, we found that KuCoin offers a feature-rich platform, with over 840 cryptocurrencies, across Futures, Spot, and Margin trading markets. With advanced trading tools and a mobile app, KuCoin is the place for advanced and aspiring traders looking to make the most of the crypto markets.

While it is available in 200+ countries, KuCoin is not regulated in very many of them. We also found customer reviews that mentioned poor customer service, and a trading experience that wasn’t optimized for the beginner. However, a highly rated mobile app, and a history of quickly adding new and trending tokens has many crypto traders choosing to use KuCoin.

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