Seven Reasons Why I Think Kucoin Will Always Be Second Tier Exchange

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Written by

#Club1BCH

1 year ago

In community: Club1BCH(4ac4)

Topics: KuCoin, Writing, Blogging, Bitcoin Cash, Experiences, ...

Kucoin is working hard to build a better Cryptoverse and I am working hard to create a steady flow of passive income. I am using it for over 2000 days, which is a life time in the crypto space, but I think Kucoin will always be a second tier exchange!

Why? Because Kucoin can't compete with the Binance volume or the constant innovations that Coinbase brings to the market. I added up a series of reasons to back my statement, and I invite you to bring some constructive feedback to this discussion.

1. An absolute joke of a referral system

The original referral system was a fiasco and I received zero perks for inviting over 70 users. The original system was broken and never worked and the upgraded one was also a fiasco, being able to claim a box with some $DOGE after onboarding 5 or 6 new users.

The newest Kucoin Referral Program went live March 23, aiming to make the platform more attractive to the average crypto users. The new system was released and users can now unlock mysterious prizes, and the referrals can also enjoy the VIP trial for one month. It was named Referral Program 2.0 but it is 3.0 if I am thinking about it!

I had 35 stars and I played the random game, opening three cheap boxes. I won 2 USDT and two useless prizes, which made me think that a 40 stars box would have been more rewarding. I don't do Margin Trials or Futures so the other two prizes are not helping! Still poor compared to ... all other exchanges!

2. Staking Rewards

SUI took over the crypto-socials when launched, with many projects going wild. It was a mix of hype and the search for the next big thing, with airdrops and token flipping going extreme.

Kucoin tapped into this new El Dorado, adding quickly $SUI for treading. Staking was added after few days and I got some coins based on FOMO and a superficial DYOR. Staked them for some crumbles, at 4% APY, and took it back after two days. The staking rewards were hilarious, and 1.17% APY is not good enough to supply liquidity! Strike two!

3. Subscriptions and the Burning Drop!

Kucoin will list cryptocurrency projects on the Burning Drop feature, and these new project tokens can be mined by staking $KCS tokens, USDT and ETH. Each cryptocurrency from the above will have a different distribution coefficient at earnings, and you must be fast enough to stake before the hard cap is reached. This hard cap is reached in few seconds, which makes me wonder if it's something dodgy with the system.

For every staked cryptocurrency, there will be a hard cap, and also a minimum amount of funds that can be staked to mine other crypto coins. In the history of the Burning Drop... I was able to join only once! This is hilarious, as the subscription period started one hour earlier than announced! I was lucky to around and see that there were only 6 minutes left until the SUIP Burning Drop becomes active, even if the website stated a different time.

I managed to stake 23 KCS and received 182 SUIP, and sold them for more KCS. The Burning Drop is elitist and it doesn't give a fair chance to all users. Compared to the Binance Launchpool and Launchpad... this is extremely poor.

4. New Highlighted Listings

None of the new highlighted listings managed to maintain a decent value. Some listings are covered in announcements and the users are stressed with emails and pop-up notifications, only to generate HYPE. I got a fair share of IHC, OLE, WELL, PMON and HOTCROSS ... and watched all drop to all-time lows.

The issue is not that they drop in value, the issue is that the crypto status shows a certain percentage of growth but is not reflected when selling. Let's have a deeper look at Captain Tsubasa - Rivals listing, as a token that had a 501% growth after listing. I was there waiting for the listing and it came straight with $0.08 value the second was listed, had a small rise and then dipped instantly. Funny enough, the token was available for trading with at least 30 seconds before the official listing time.

The token powers the blockchain game based on “Captain Tsubasa”, a pioneer of the soccer manga that has influenced soccer kids around the world. The theme of the game is to enjoy developing and strengthening your one-of-a-kind character NFT while competing against rival characters from “Captain Tsubasa” and other players for items.

I totally agree that volatility is high when new tokens are listed, but this is far from transparent. It looks like a game for whales, and pump & dump every single time. I wanted to play with fire and gambled few bucks on this, only to lose 30% of the investment in less than a minute.

I will compare again with Binance, where tokens are listed with the precision of Swiss watches and the "dump" is not that accelerated. This makes me wonder if the issue is with the tokens chosen for listing by Kucoin and not with the listing method.

5. Lending

I honestly struggled with the UI for the lending opportunities. For some cryptocurrencies you could see the value of the total and how much was available, while for others you could see only what's in the wallet. The overall balance included some of the borrowed assets, while others where only visible in the Lending page.

The lending rewards was far from user-friendly, and didn't included overall statistics for rewards or the total lending. The only option was to manually check the assets and scroll through pages of partial repayments.

6. Eligibility For Events And Lack Of Transparency

All the events on Kucoin have silly requirements, and nothing is ever simple. You have to register, trade, be in the top of the traders, swap at least X amount of tokens, and so on. There is always a ridiculous amount of tasks to be done before becoming eligible, and the rewards are always low. Whale game again!

Another issue is the lack of transparency, as the winners of the big prizes are never announced anywhere. I am not talking about reveling identities or things like that, but at least a name or a Kucoin ID.

I participated in many events for content creators, and never won one of those top prizes. Not an issue, as I always found some USDT in my account with a mention that it was from the content creators challenge. But who won those top prizes? No one knows!

7. Candies And The Wheel Of Fortune

This rivals with the CoinMarketCap diamonds, but the Kucoin one is worst! There's no real prize at the Wheel of Fortune, with everything on the list being no were close to a bonus. Shall we compare it with CoinGecko?

I noticed that claiming candies is no longer available, as this feature isn't available anymore. I collected 29,800 candies, and I hope that the makeover will bring some swag or at least... prizes!

Meanwhile, I am slowly increasing my KCS holdings and getting ready for the bull run! That all-time high at $28,83 is very approachable, and I think Kucoin has a decent future ahead ... even as a second tier exchange!