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KuCoin review – Who is behind KuCoin?
The KuCoin exchange was created by Michael Gan, Eric Don, Top Lan, Kent Li, John Lee, Jack Zhu and Linda Lin. The project was a passion project of both Michael and Eric. Michael had begun coding at the young age of 8 and had already founded his first startup at the age of 16. Eric, who was Michael’s boss at the time, told Eric about Bitcoin and the potential of cryptocurrencies.
Michael was interested in this new currency and immediately began work as a crypto miner. When it came to selling his BTC, however, he realized that the biggest platform at the time was rather difficult to navigate for a beginner. This sparked an idea in his mind. He wanted to create a trading platform everyone could use to sell and buy cryptocurrencies. And in 2017 that dream came true when Michael and Eric launched their own crypto trading platform in the form of KuCoin. And now we’re taking a closer look at KuCoin in our Kucoin review 2022.
KuCoin review – Is this broker regulated?
While KuCoin is not regulated by any of the well-known regulation authorities, the platform itself uses a system to ensure only regulated traders are using their platform, creating a more safe and more secure trading environment.
The website has a section that goes into this P2P merchant regulation in detail, so you should definitely take a look at it if you’re interested. The basic gist of it is, that you’ll have to fill out a merchant application as well as provide a deposit. Once your application is approved you will be able to access specific merchant features.
These merchant regulations also prevent any illicit behaviour as well as fraud of any kind. The system also ensures that merchants provide feedback, whenever an account may be frozen due to lack of funds, ensuring that issues like that are dealt with in a rather timely manner. All in all these regulatory policies are a pretty good substitute for a proper license.
Kucoin review – Is this broker available in USA?
Yes, Capital.com count with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, the Securities and Exchange Commission in Cyprus, the FSA, and ASIC. It accepts clients from around the world, with the notable exception of the US.
KuCoin review – Hacking incident
One of the most notable recent events connected to KuCoin was a hacking incident that took place in September 2020. During this “virtual heist” a whooping 280 Million Dollars in cryptocurrency was stolen from hot wallets on KuCoins’ crypto trading platform.
All in all 154 tokens were affected by the hack, but despite that, it only took KuCoin about a week to return the money and continue business as usual. In total, 222 Million dollars were recovered by partners and exchanges, while law enforcement managed to track down another 17.45 Million dollars. The remaining money was covered by insurance, which meant all the investors and traders were able to keep their money.
While this is obviously not a good sign for the security of the website, it’s good to know that even under these circumstances KuCoin managed to keep the funds of its users secured.
KuCoin review – KCS Coin
One of the advantages of KuCoin is its very own native KCS coin. The platform offers a lot of incentives when it comes to its native coin, such as lower withdrawal fees, lower trading fees, as well as special rewards among other things.
It’s definitely worth buying this coin on KuCoin and holding it, to profit from the low fees and the other advantages the coin brings. On top of that KuCoin is a rather quickly growing platform, which just makes the coin even more attractive.
KuCoin review – A look at the advantages and disadvantages of KuCoin
As with most good platforms KuCoin offers a rather large selection of assets and cryptocurrencies in particular. You’ll find practically every digital currency you can think of on this platform, allowing you more flexibility than you can imagine. This allows for diverse trading strategies.
Another big advantage is the mobile kucoin app review that comes with KuCoins’ trading platform. It’s one of the few apps that is both intuitive as well as properly designed with mobile phones in mind. The withdrawal fees are also pretty low all things considered, especially when you use the aforementioned KCS token.
Pros:
- Wide variety of coins offered
- KCS coin with lots of incentives
- Intuitive interface
- Low fees
Cons
- Payment methods are rather limited
- Only a few educational resources
- Bad customer support
KuCoin review – What’s the problem with KuCoins’ customer support?
One of the things that were rather striking to us when reviewing this crypto trading platform was the customer support. While it’s probably not the worst you may encounter, there were a few problems related to customer service.
For instance, accessing customer support felt rather counterintuitive, as the help center was rather confusing to navigate. It was also rather difficult to find a phone number to reach the office, let alone the office hours. User reviews across the board were negative, showing that KuCoins’ customer support is definitely one of its weak points.
There is a live chat function as well as a ticket system which you can use. The phone number is (855) 206-2326 in case you want to contact the customer support via phone.
KuCoin review – Intuitive platform
While the customer support section was rather confusing to navigate through, luckily the rest of the platform has a rather intuitive interface, making it one of the better trading platforms to navigate through.
If you’re an avid trader then you’ll enjoy selling and buying your digital currencies on KuCoin, as you won’t be left confused while navigating the trading sections.
KuCoin review – Fees
When it comes to trading one of the most important aspects are the fees. This is especially true when you’re selling and buying digital cryptocurrencies as an active trader, as digital currencies are quite volatile. This creates a lot of opportunities for trades, and the lower the fees, the easier it is for you to potentially make a profit.
The good thing is: KuCoin is quite competitive when it comes to fees and it can easily keep up with the other platforms. Even more so when you use the KCS token, lowering the trading fees even more.
Here’s an overview of the fee structure:
*Note the KCS discounts on the top right.
KuCoin review – Payment methods of KuCoin
A good trading platform should have a wide variety of different payment options in order to attract as many traders as possible as well as make the trading experience as smooth as possible for the user.
However, since KuCoin is a crypto-to-crypto exchange exclusively, as covered in our kucoin exchange review, this means that buying and withdrawing fiat currencies is a little more tricky than usual. To do this you have to use a third-party platform such as SImplex or Banxa. Using the Buy Crypto services you will be able to access more fiat payment options.
The good thing is: KuCoin does not charge fees for deposits and it has a fixed fee for withdrawals, varying on the withdrawal method. Transactions are also processed rather quickly and usually do not take longer than 1 hour, which in turn means that users should see the change in their wallet within 2-3 hours top.
KuCoin review – Crypto Lending
One of the more interesting features of KuCoin is the Crypto Lending feature, which allows you to lend crypto tokens to other traders. Depending on the coin you’ll have different interest rates and terms connected to each coin.
This is a good way to earn money passively, practically as if receiving interest from depositing money into a savings account. However, there’s still some small risk involved in case the person borrowing from you is unable to repay you. However, KuCoin also has safety measures for this in place and will generally cover the owed amount.
KuCoin review – Trading Bot
During our kucoin Trading Bot review we found a rather good Trading Bot, which allows you to automate your trading experience. It comes with programmable actions that will be executed when certain market conditions are fulfilled.
As a professional trader, this is a blessing, as we all know that certain market patterns almost always lead to the same results. That way you can use the past as an indicator for the future, and the kucoin Trading Bots reviewed will automatically react and trade for you.
KuCoin review – What can I trade on this platform?
- 600 cryptocurrencies wait for you on KuCoin, among them popular coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple and KuCoins’ very own KCS coin. The latter is particularly useful on the KuCoin trading platform, allowing you to profit from discounts and other incentives.
- KuCoin Leveraged Tokens are tokens with leverage, which are managed by a fund manager. They aim to enable traders to make a certain multiple of the profit of the inferior token. For example, if the underlying asset is KCS and KCS increases by 3%, the net value of BTC3L increases by 9% while the net value of BTC3S decreases by 9%. This makes KuCoin one of the most attractive platforms in our kucoin futures review.
KuCoin review – How to do Margin Trading on KuCoin
To do Margin trading on KuCoin you need to follow these simple steps:
- First you need to make a deposit on your Margin account
- Borrow your funds from the funding market
- Margin trade (in our example Buy Long/Sell Short)
In this example we want to buy long using BTC with the BTC/USDT trading pair. So we use the borrowed USDT to buy BTC.
Close position: Once the BTC price goes up we sell the BTC we bought back to USDT.
In essence, a margin trade is exactly the same as a spot trade.
- Now that the trade’s finished you can repay the USDT you borrowed as well as the interest. The remaining USDT is your profit, which you could now use for further trades.
Please note that you cannot user different tokens to repay your USDT loan. You have to pay it back with the same token you borrowed in the first place.
KuCoin review – Conclusion
After thoroughly trying out this platform we can safely say that it’s among the better platforms out there. The large selection of cryptocurrencies available as well as the rather good fee structure makes it one of the best crypto-to-crypto exchanges in the world. On top of that, you have access to a lot of different trading tools, that’ll make your trading experience rather smooth.
One of the few downsides of using KuCoin is customer support, which is something the platform definitely needs to work on. While you won’t be left on your own whenever you have an issue, it generally takes some time until you get a reply, so take it with a grain of salt.
Overall the good definitely outweighs the bad, and although the hacking incident of 2020 isn’t something to be worn like a crown, we have to hold KuCoin in high regard for repaying their customers out of their own pocket as well as their insurer’s pockets.