KuCoin shares are somewhat new to the market. To better realize what KuCoin Shares are, it is important to first analyze what KuCoin cryptocurrency is.
Table Of Contents
- KuCoin
- How it all started
- What are KuCoin shares?
- Trading fees
- Noteworthy features
- Pros and cons
- How to buy
- Perspectives
- Conclusion
KuCoin
KuCoin is the international token created by KuCoin Inc., a company registered in China under the leadership of Michael Gan (former technical expert at Ant Financial—an affiliate of the Alibaba Group). The token supports trading 210 digital tokens and follows a similar concept as Binance: offering relatively low trading fees and incentivizing crypto users. Another brilliant feature of KuCoin tokens is that holders are awarded 50 percent of the overall trading fees revenue.
How it all started
Let us get back to 2011 when KuCoin creators delved into the crypto world and carried out thorough research to identify what works in the industry and what does not. The team core consisted of Mike Gam—founder and CEO, former technical expert at Ant Financial—and Eric Don—COO, previously worked with such prosperous ventures as Youlin and Kiteme. Other worthy mentions include Top Lan, John Li, Jack Zhu, Kent Li, Remy Ran, D.K, Will Zhang, Luka, and Vitace.
It was not until 2013 that they grew confident enough to apply the knowledge they gathered and come up with the KuCoin cryptocurrency. Having launched it in 2017, they hoped it would become one of the world’s top cryptocurrencies by 2019. Then, over 50 mainstream cryptocurrency pairs were listed.
Its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) was divided into three:
- 70M tokens (35 percent) were provided to the platform’s founders. This was set to undergo a year-long lock-up period after which the founders would be free to sell or assign their holdings.
- 30M tokens (15 percent) were provided to angel investors, consultants, and industry stars. This phase would be locked up for two years.
- 100M tokens (50 percent) were meant for the public who would be able to buy or sell them at any time after acquiring them.
According to the most recent news shot off from credible cryptocurrency news outlets, KuCoin exchange has started offering self-release of a cryptocurrency pair which has largely contributed to it being ranked as the 19th largest trading exchange in volume.
As of the moment of composing this text, the coin’s market cap stood at $89,078,349 with a daily trading volume of $2,572,237. The supply amounted to 89,939,916 KCS and total market supply to $179,939,916. Click here to keep up with the Token’s daily market performance.
What are KuCoin shares?
KuCoin shares are KuCoin exchange platform’s native currency which holders can use to financially benefit from the exchange proceedings. Its market supply comes to 200 million KCS, bound to reduce by 100 million after a buyback.
As mentioned above, holders are given 50 percent of the overall trading fees revenue collected by the platform. However, the amount one gets hinges on the number of tokens held: the more one holds, the more they gain. The same works for trading discounts holders get for handling the cryptocurrency.
For example, to qualify for a 1-percent discount on trading fees, you need to own at least 1,000 KCS, whereas the heaviest possible discount rate is 30 percent which is bestowed after accumulating 40,000 KCS.
Trading fees
Compared to other exchanges, the platform offers market-competitive prices for transactions carried out on the site. For one thing, there are no deposit fees charged apart from what a user usually incurs when transferring currency. Trading fees are set at 0.1 percent or lower owing to the amount of KCS one holds. Generally, the amount you are likely to spend handling various crypto coins will depend on the type of token you are dealing with. Whereas some can be transacted for free, others are usually quite costly.
Noteworthy features
1. Affiliate compensations
The platform rewards traders who get to advertise it someway, by crediting a fixed interest of the trading fees the invited users will be charged. For example, if Trader A invites Trader B, A gets a given interest of trading fees charged by the platform for transactions made by B. If the invited trader—Trader B—brings Trader C into the game, both A and B will benefit from trading fees that C will incur. This can go down to three levels.
2. Financial system
Basically, KuCoin’s financial backbone is the advanced multi-layer and multi-cluster architecture. It is disaster-proof deployed at two locations with three centers to facilitate multi-tasking in various locations. Such an infrastructure ensures solid security in case of hardware failures or unexpected natural disasters.
3. Data transfer layers
All transfer layers are encrypted with the industry-standard protocol—all user data are stored protected the safest data encryption available. Users can rest assured of the safety of sensitive data and transactions details thanks to the dynamic authentication mechanism.
4. Powerful technology
The platform has a highly-efficient memory-matching technology which can make more than 2 million orders per second and process up to 1 million orders in a second.
5. Bonus system
Every day KuCoin engineers analyze the total amount of revenue earned from different pairs traded on the platform. Then, Team KuCoin awards traders with 50 percent of the amount traded in accordance to the number of tokens they hold. Hence at 12.00 AM (UTC+8) traders are bound to notice an increased amount of the cryptocurrencies they hold—e.g. Bitcoin, Nano, and Dragonchain, among others.
This reward system is advantageous to traders having no interest in trading but eager to let their investment do the work for them. In such cases—just by holding a reasonable amount of KuCoin shares—they get to earn and accumulate more cryptocurrency coins.
However, industry experts expect the 50-percent rate to be reduced to some 15 percent in the future.
Pros and cons of trading with KuCoin explained
Pros
Apart from benefiting from the exchange’s trading revenue, holding KuCoin Shares provides users with the following features:
- Individual investment consultation services from the exchange expert advisory team.
- Guaranteed low lag during transaction processes even at market peaks—users always enjoy fast transactions.
- Friendly and affordable trading fees: you only have to pay 0.1-percent trading fees that are based on the number of items you buy.
- Efficient customer service which allows you to access required services through your most preferred channel. Available options include webpage, hotline, email, social media pages, etc.
- Clean and modern easy-to-use design.
- The advance payment and withdrawal system is usually inspected by Artificial Intelligence algorithm before approval—making the platform safe and secure to transact.
- KuCoin lists new cryptocurrency coins quite early compared to other trading platforms. This enables KuCoin to gain a firmer foothold in the market.
- Invitation bonus immediately after signing upon KuCoin.
- Popular cryptocurrency tokens—including ETH, BTC, and USDT—are supported.
- Efficient API system.
- Worldwide reach: KuCoin welcomes users from across the globe, offering a plethora of interface languages—e.g. English, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Dutch, Mandarin, and Spanish.
- Strong financial security ensured by the founders’ expertise. The website has experienced no major hacks since the launch and up to now.
- No verification during the sign-up.
Furthermore, the team of experts managing the platform have the immense experience in working for reputable companies. In fact, they spent around 6 years on researching about cryptocurrencies and ironing out irregularities before launching—this makes the platform even more credible.
Cons
Despite tons of benefits, this platform has its shortcomings. The most common ones include:
- KuCoin’s options for trading pairs are a bit limited compared to other common platforms.
- No fiat payment option: one cannot exchange their tokens for conventional currency—e.g. dollar—unless they first trade them for other cryptocurrencies which accept such payment options.
- No margin trading.
- No proper regulation: little information regarding exchange regulation and ownership. All you get is a list of people behind with their pictures and brief info.
- Since the platform is new, a lot of people trying to sign in sometimes leads up to more traffic than the site can handle.
- Bonus interest may be canceled in the future.
- Since the token is based on the Ethereum network, it also relies on Ethereum’s security which leaves it a bit vulnerable. The Ethereum Network has suffered several hack attacks before hence it may only be a matter of time before KuCoin is attacked too.
Interested in acquiring KuCoin shares?
How to buy
You can buy them via KuCoin’s platform or CoinSwitch (the former is considered more preferable as it is more secure). KuCoin’s site has a dedicated mobile app compatible both with Android and iOS. To access the site, you need to sign up. Do not forget to set up the two-factor verification to make your account secure.
You do not need to verify your identity to start trading: once you set up and authenticate your account, you are good to go. To activate your account, you need to deposit some funds to your account so you can purchase altcoins. After that, you will be able to control and manage your settings, bonuses, rewards, and assets in your account.
KuCoin shares can be bought in exchange for other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin. KuCoin can be bought for BTC, BHC, UHDT, and ETH; and sold for NEO, BTC, RPX, DASH, CAG, GAS, MOD, and BCH. No limitations applied: transact as much as you like. You are likely to find transacting on the site fairly fast unless the amount involved is huge.
Note: KuCoin shares cannot be directly traded with fiat currency.
Once you buy these tokens, you need to store them in a viable wallet. Since KCS is an ERC20 token, common available options include MyEtherWallet, Coinomi and MetaMask among others. The most advisable options are hardware wallets such as Ledger Nano S or Trezor.
KuCoin perspectives
Statistically, KuCoin has been stably growing since its very creation. This is evident from its increasing trading volume, capitalization, and shares. As of July 2018, its capitalization amounted to $248 million, whereas its shares rose from $0.4 in December to $19.04 in January 2018. Now, KuCoin users are awarded about $0.15 USD daily for tokens worth $1,000. From this analysis, industry experts predict that the future only looks brighter for this platform, hence its users are bound to reap even more benefits in the future.
The company plans to expand by introducing a new feature onto the platform which would allow independent parties to register their own cryptocurrencies pairs and conveniently use them to trade.
It is also important to note that KuCoin is based in Hong Kong now thus it operates chiefly in China. As the company plans to expand and effectively cover more regions in the world, traders will see whether it fits in with cryptocurrency regulations in other jurisdictions.
On the other hand, the company seems to be facing stiff competition from OKEx—currently ranked as the world’s largest trading platform and reportedly handling a trading volume of $128 million every day. If KuCoin does not continue taking adequate measures to keep its users interested, OKEx may eventually suffocate it.
Conclusion
KuCoin is among the latest cryptocurrencies in the world today. So far, users enjoy low-cost trading, compelling bonuses, and impressive trading volumes on different assets. However, just like any other cryptocurrency, the token has its own drawbacks—e.g. no support for fiat currencies nor the clear legal status of being regulated.
Nevertheless, the future seems promising for this new cryptocurrency coin—hence investing is a good idea. Use the above information to gauge whether investing in this coin will suit your needs. Additionally, do some research and carefully track how the coin is doing in the market so as to establish the most opportune time to invest.