KuCoin Review: SCAM or Legit in 2024?

Cryptocurrencies are among the hype topics these days. If 10 years ago people hardly knew anything about the crypto market, today any news release is full of information about Bitcoin fluctuations. With the upward trend in the crypto market in recent years, investors worldwide started to include crypto in their portfolios. The number of transactions processed through crypto coins has also significantly increased, leading to the rapid development of crypto exchanges. More and more people want to earn on the crypto fluctuations through trading. At the same time, investors become more mature and spend time and effort to investigate the available crypto exchanges for their operations, choosing only those which offer a unique combination of security, usability, and transaction fees. 

Of course, any newcomer to the crypto world has heard about Binance – the most popular crypto exchange available today. But having acquainted with various reviews and testing the platform you are likely to search for more user-friendly, cheaper, and anonymous alternatives. That’s where KuCoin comes into the game. Having read this review you’ll be able to shed light on various questions related to KuCoin, for example: is KuCoin a good exchange, is KuCoin legit, is KuCoin safe, and others. 

What is KuCoin?

KuCoin is the crypto exchange founded in 2017 in Hong Kong. Since its launch, the platform received the nickname “People Exchange”, emphasizing its transparency for any person who wants to buy or sell digital currencies without any bottlenecks. 

Since that period KuCoin has become one of the most popular crypto platforms in the world with more than 5 million users. People choose KuCoin over other exchanges due to its low fees and unique customer support. The variety of crypto coins being traded on the platform, as well the possibility to trade anonymously across 200 countries all over the world make it even more popular. 

The key features of the platform include:

• buying and selling of order books 
• 400+ cryptocurrencies pairs available for exchange
• 0.1% trading fee with possible discounts up to 30%
• zero transaction fee for deposits
• support of mobile apps
• 200+ countries supported
• 24/7 customer support
• advanced charts for the analysis of your trading strategy

What Services Does KuCoin Offer?

KuCoin would never join the list of top crypto exchanges if it has not offered a unique combination of services for its users. In this section we’ll briefly discuss the main capabilities of the platform, focusing on some of its unique offerings in the next sections. 

What can you do on KuCoin?

• exchange fiat money for crypto – that’s a start for newcomers who want to buy their first cryptocurrency on the platform with fiat money
• buy and sell 200 cryptocurrencies with a 0.1% fee
• instant exchange tool – in case you don’t want to see the big and complex trading dashboard, focusing only on the crypto pair you trade this tool is your choice
• p2p marketplace – where you can find other users who are buying or selling the crypto coin you’re interested in for a certain price. If their price matches your expectations you can make a deal with them directly without any commissions
• futures and margin trading – where you can exchange cryptos with up to 100x leverage.
•  lending – where you can lend your crypto for margin trading for a sufficient daily interest rate (0.124%)

KuCoin Margin Trading 

The margin trading feature was introduced at KuCoin at the end of 2019 and since that period gained significant popularity among users. The idea of margin trading is to use the funds of other users to earn more during the exchange. The one thing you have to remember is that you can either gain or lose. If you were trading with margin you can leverage your position  

For example, if your profit for the transaction is $100 and you were trading with 10X leverage your real profit will reach $1000, but you can also lose $1000 instead of $100 in case the price of the crypto coin will not follow the projected direction. 

KuCoin Futures Trading

Futures trading feature has been introduced at Kucoin in the middle of 2019. The service allows buyers to purchase crypto at a certain price and specific time in future with up to 100X leverage. 

Returning to our previous example, if you have $100 you can trade for $10000 contracts. Again you have to be aware that risks here are even higher than with margin trading, hence it’s recommended only for professionals with long-term experience in crypto trading.

KuCoin Lending Platform

The other interesting service of KuCoin is its lending platform, where you can lend some of the cryptocurrencies being traded on the exchange to other users.

You can lend your crypto for 7, 14 or 28 days with a 0.2% interest rate. This service seems especially interesting for crypto holders who’d like to earn interest for lending their funds to margin traders.

KuCoin Shares

The other interesting feature of KuCoin is the specific privileges for the holders of its shares. The owners of the shares not only have up to 30% discounts on the transaction fees for operations on the platform but can also receive dividends. These dividends are collected from the transaction fees collected on the platform and deliver sufficient monthly income to their owners. In fact, KuCoin pays about 50% of the revenue the exchange receives from transactions on the platform and distributes this revenue in equal amounts among their users. KuCoin Shares can be purchased only directly from the KuCoin platform, hence that’s exclusive privilege for its users.

KuCoin Review: Supported Countries and Languages

KuCoin is in fact a global platform being presented in nearly any country around the world. It works in the USA, EU, Japan, Canada, India, etc., supporting all the main fiat currencies like USD, EUR, GBP, CNY and others. The additional advantage of the platform is its language diversity. Being supported in more than 17 national languages KuCoin is open to any world nationality.

A common question among newcomers to KuCoin is where is the KuCoin exchange physically located and KuCoin available in the USA if it’s not located there. KuCoin headquarters are in Seychelles, but you can easily use its services in the USA and KuCoin is a good exchange for the USA citizens as it is cheap and user-friendly.

How to Use KuCoin?

You can become a KuCoin user in seconds. The process is quite straightforward and consists of several simple steps:

• enter the KuCoin website https://www.kucoin.com/
• click the “Sign-up” button
• choose the email account to serve as your future login and choose the solid password
• verify your account if you plan to use such KuCoin services as margin and futures trading 
• add 2-factor authentication using Google authenticator to your account if necessary 
• start to explore KuCoin

You can perform operations on KuCoin anonymously, but only for small trades. If you plan to use KuCoin services on trade with large amounts of crypto you’ll require formal verification of your identity.

How to Trade on KuCoin?

Again the process of trading through KuCoin is straightforward. You can start to trade on the platform following these steps:

• Send funds to your account to buy fiat
• Use “Markets” display to see all the trading pairs available
• Click on the trading pair of interest to you
• Enter the main trading screen and click “Buy” button
• Choose the best price and purchase the coin you need

Please note that if you’re a newcomer to KuCoin you have funded your account with fiat money, but once you have purchased your first crypto coins you can exchange them for other cryptos. 

The important thing to consider is the anonymity of your operations. Many users care about their privacy and would prefer to remain anonymous if that’s possible. You may be sure that trading on KuCoin can be anonymous, but it does not mean that you might perform risky operations like margin for futures trading. Once you’re interested in unique KuCoin services or plan to transition sufficient amounts of funds through the platform you will be obliged to go through a formal identification process, providing your official documents.

There are additional privileges for the users who go through the procedure of KYC identification on the KuCoin platform, including:

• higher withdrawal limit
• insurance against hackers attacks
• additional protection against external threats
• unlimited trading per day

You have to remember that it will not be possible to withdraw more than 2 BTC per day in case you have not performed identification. It might not be crucial if you’re a newcomer to the market, but if you’re planning to trade large sums of crypto on the platform and expect to withdraw your funds at the period of significant market fluctuations verification has to be your choice. 

Privacy and Security: Is KuCoin Safe for Your Transactions?

One of the main concerns for crypto holders and traders is the safety and privacy of their personal data. KuCoin is a good exchange for users who care about security due to a number of reasons:

• 2-factor authentication to protect your personal account details
• micro-withdrawal wallets to secure your withdrawals from the exchange
• internal risk control department checking the security of the platform 24/7
• insurance coverage for the compensation of hackers attacks

All these measures make KuCoin a perfect place to exchange your cryptos and you might be sure that even in case of hacker attack your funds are insured and protected.

Regardless of the various security features within KuCoin interface the crypto exchange has still experienced hacker attacks and one of them was rather successful in 2020. What was good even under such circumstances was that all the users who lost funds during the attack got compensation for their loss. The insurance policy of KuCoin saved the money of its users and raised even more credibility across the world. 

Final Verdict on KuCoin

KuCoin is one of the young, but very popular crypto exchanges these days. Of course, it’s not as popular as its main competitor Binance, but its 6 million users worldwide put it in second place in the world. The reasons for KuCoin popularity are its user-friendly interface, low fees and outstanding customer support. In fact, this exchange can be considered a top player in the industry not only due to its diverse services and intuitive interface but due to its security and constant care about users’ privacy.

The good thing about KuCoin is its ability to serve the purposes of both professional investors and beginners. The diversity of the crypto coins offered for trading on the platform and extensive range of services, such as margin and futures trading, and lending make the exchange really unique. When a minded investor is looking for a secure, fast, and cheap crypto exchange KuCoin has to be the best choice.

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that the content of this article is not financial or investing advice. The information provided is the author’s opinion only and should not be considered as direct recommendations for trading or investment. Any article reader or website visitor should consider multiple viewpoints and become familiar with all local regulations before cryptocurrency investment. We do not make any warranties about reliability and accuracy of this information.