KuCoin in 2021 Q3 Review

There has been a lot going on in the crypto industry in Q3 2021, and KuCoin has been keeping up with the game change at our own pace to gradually realize our vision. So far, KuCoin ranks as top 3 crypto exchanges on CoinMarketCap (CMC), and is named as one of the best crypto exchanges for 2021 by Forbes Advisor for our rich altcoin portfolios. Regardless of the market volatility, we are dedicated to bringing more innovative products and hidden gems to meet user demands. Our main purpose above everything else is to lower the barriers of entry for everyone to enter the crypto world and enable them to benefit from the free flow of digital value.

We have prepared a 2021 Q3 report to display the key statistics and facts on our progress in user flows, trading volume, token listing, R&D, and new product launch that we have achieved during the market development.

Data-driven is one of the key cultures here at KuCoin to precisely measure our development. Various data reflect on our continuous growth on each aspect of the ecosystem, and the number also clearly shows where the growth opportunities are.

Trading Volume

Our trading volume keeps rising over the last quarter with our refinement in spot trading and futures trading services. The trading volume of KuCoin in Q3 2021 has surpassed $258 billion, up 720% compared with Q3 last year. The average daily volume in Q3 has reached $2.91 billion, peaking at $8.43 billion on September 8, 2021. The average daily volume in September 2021 surged 299% to $3.91 billion, when compared to the figure of $0.98 billion in the beginning of this year.

Spot trading is the first and one of the main services we are offering. If compared with other major Centralized Exchanges (CEXs*), we can see that KuCoin's share of volume is on the rise. KuCoin's percentage of transaction volume soared from around 1.5% at the beginning of the year to almost 5% by the end of this quarter, thanks to our continuous efforts to find the next crypto gems.

Source: Coingecko

*Major CEXs here includes Binance, Huobi, Gate.io, FTX, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Kraken and KuCoin

The futures trading service at KuCoin started in July 2019, and after two years of development, it has become another rocket booster in our global expansion. Recent figures showed that KuCoin Futures accounted for 59%, 49% and 51% respectively of total KuCoin transaction volume in July, August, and September, which was gradually catching up with our spot volume. Considering that the future-spot ratio in transaction volume can be 2 to 4 in other leading exchanges, we are confident that there is still a huge potential for KuCoin Futures to continuously grow.

Source: KuCoin

User

There’s a 1.5 million increase in newly registered users on KuCoin in Q3 2021, a decrease by 28% over the last quarter, while maintaining a sharp increase at 446% QOQ, amongst which the Middle East, Northern Europe and Southeast Asia were the fastest growing regions, with 158%, 85% and 64% growth respectively. The monthly average traders were around 705k in Q3, maintaining the same level Q/Q, and reached 4.26x increase QOQ compared to 134k in Q3 last year.

After the explosive growth in Q1 and the stumble in Q2, the interest on automatic program trading with KuCoin Trading Bot is picking up again in the third quarter. The number of trading bots created approached 3.5 million by the end of September, recording a 49% Q/Q growth.

Source: KuCoin

Earn (Lending & Staking)

Under current market performance, many investors are holding their crypto assets, waiting for another price surge. If you are more like a HOLDer rather than a frequent trader, you have many choices to earn passive income by keeping your idle assets on KuCoin. One of the services that are extremely popular lately is KuCoin Lending. It maximizes user assets with a stable return on interest by allowing them to lend out over 70 tokens.

In this quarter, the average daily lending volume on KuCoin Lending platform almost reaches $100 million, and the volume peaked on September 8^th at $241 million. In most days of the period, Tether (USDT) took up over 90% of the total volume, indicating that most margin traders are prone to long rather than short.

Source: KuCoin

On KuCoin Lending, users' return is highly associated with the interest rate, and it is observed that the rate changes are closely in line with the crypto market moves. The average daily USDT lending APR on KuCoin Lending ranged from 3.65% to 35.77% in this quarter, and by comparing the trend with the Bitcoin price change, it is noticed that the lending APR tends to remain low and steady when the market is on a downward trend, while once the price picks up, it showed a strong and fast bounce back. The highest APR appeared almost the same time BTC price reached its all-time high in this quarter.

Source: KuCoin

Another way to earn passive income is to stake with us. Currently over 50 tokens, DOT, ZIL, ATOM, MATIC, ADA to name a few, are available on the KuCoin Staking platform (Pool-X), offering staking rewards with an APR ranging from 1.5% to 60%. Till the end of the third quarter, KuCoin has paid out more than $50 million in rewards to users who stake with us.

KCS

As been mentioned in the letter from our CEO earlier this year, empowering KCS is one of our priorities in 2021 and beyond. We will continue to build around KCS to add more value into it, meanwhile accelerating the burn to maintain its scarce nature. In the past three months, more than $6.68 million KCS has been burnt, and it surged almost 14x QOQ. In 2021, we have burnt over $20 million KCS, about 3x higher than the accumulated burnt value in 2019 and 2020.

The number of KCS address grew steadily in the past three months with a 12% QOQ increment. We’ve seen a positive impact on the growth of KCS holders after the mainnet launch of KCC in this June, the KCS address growth on the KCC public chain contributed to 45% of the overall growth this quarter.

Source: KuCoin, KCC Explorer

At KuCoin, we do not care much about short term price changes, as we believe that as we keep building up the overall ecosystem, the price will take care of itself. In this quarter, KCS price climbed by 35%, outperforming other major tokens like BTC (18%), ETH (25%) and DOGE (-21%). In comparison with other centralized exchange tokens, KCS is still the top runner, with a 1345% up in price since the beginning of this year.

Source: Coingecko

System Performance & Stability

To offer users with a better trading experience, KuCoin keeps optimizing the performance of the core trading system. In Q3, the throughput of KuCoin Trading System has been increased by 40% with an improved stability of the whole trading system. In addition, we have further strengthened the performance and stability of the Margin Trading System and conducted risk control in a more timely and accurate manner. We also carried out stability construction and destructive testing to stabilize the overall Margin Trading System.

Team & Talents

We always regard talents as a key competitive advantage to make us stand out from the fast-changing crypto world, so we keep expanding our team in all areas of expertise to meet the growing demand of our users. From July to September 2021, we welcomed 179 new members on board in multiple continents, bringing our total number of employees to 630, almost doubled since the end of 2020. We significantly enlarged our team in product & development, data analysis & intelligence, fiat & payment, to further innovate and upgrade beyond existing products and services.

New Listings

As one of the biggest altcoins trading platforms, KuCoin has been continuously supporting high-quality crypto assets. In Q3 of 2021, we have discovered 86 promising crypto assets and introduced them to our platform through various channels such as direct listing, Spotlight, KuCoin Win, BurningDrop, etc. Among them, 16 projects with world premiere listing on KuCoin achieved outstanding performance. For instance, MOVR achieved 98 times price increase, and OOE and QRDO increased by 39x.

As the home of crypto gem, KuCoin Spotlight has been exploring promising projects in its early stage. So far, KuCoin Spotlight has launched 14 token sales. In Q3 2021, the average ATH ROI of the three gems, namely BURP, LITH and IXS, reaches 510%.

Source: HappyBlock

BurningDrop provides a low threshold for participants to access the early investment of crypto projects. So far, BurningDrop has aggregated 20 projects, of which 6 were launched in Q3 this year, with an average ROI of 3167%.

2021 witnessed the outbreak of the new trend in blockchain world - Metaverse. As the traditional Internet giant Facebook announced its vision on expanding into Metaverse, other Internet tycoons all scrambled for it. The emergent Play-To-Earn Gamefi is also part of the hot trend. To facilitate users to understand what Metaverse is while obtaining an easy access to Metaverse projects, KuCoin launched the first Metaverse Trading Board in September. So far, we already support around 10 Metaverse projects including AXS, ENJ, and MANA.

KuCoin Pool

We also launched KuCoin Pool, the world's first mining pool that supports and encourages miners to use clean energy. Currently, KuCoin Pool supports BTC, BCH and ETH mining, and it provides financial derivatives and a comprehensive value-add services for miners around the globe. KuCoin Pool provides a highly competitive mining fee of 2% compared with other mining pools. In addition, it optimized mining algorithm to achieve a higher mining efficiency with faster block production and higher rewards with the same hashrate.

Chrome Extension

Providing users with simple and convenient services is the purpose of KuCoin. In September, we launched the Google Chrome Extension to facilitate users to access KuCoin directly from Chrome. You can simply go to the browser toolbar and check the cryptocurrency price updated every minute from KuCoin. You can add Google extensions to your browser on the KuCoin official website homepage, or find it in the Chrome Web Store.

Guardian Star

KuCoin Win launched the Guardian Star in September 2021 to enable all KuCoin users to access NFTs and crypto prizes in an entertaining and low-cost manner. Guardian Star is a lucky draw game in the form of mystery boxes, which contains fun elements of NFT, cryptocurrency, mythology, and constellations. NFT winners can either hold it for more surprising bonuses or trade it on NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.

In Q3 2021, KuCoin Labs has deployed strategic layout in multiple popular ecosystems such as Ethereum, Terra, Polygon, Avalanche, etc., in accordance with the recent market recovery and to further refine KuCoin ecosystem. In addition, KuCoin Labs has made cross-industry investment in promising blockchain projects categorized in infrastructure, DeFi, Metaverse, SocialFi, including Star Terra, Antimatter, Swash, Bloktopia, Symbiosis, HurricaneSwap, scallop, Standard, Tribeone, Unore, Fractal Protocol, DAOsquare, etc.

In addition, KuCoin Labs has been expanding its partnership network in Q3, including well-known investment institutions such as AU21, IOSG, Altonomy, SkyVision, Pinpoint, Momentum 6; IDO platforms such as Polystarter, Launchpool; public chain ecosystems including Ethereum, Avalanche, Near, Flow, Web3; and DAOs such as DAOSquare, OG, DoraFactory and MahaDAO.

Furthermore, KuCoin Labs keeps up with the industry's latest trend and hot topics in terms of blockchain technology, market movement, and emerging concepts, and produced monthly report on themes of Axie Infinity and EIP-1559 in July and August. Also, the Q2 industry report from KuCoin Labs have explored in–depth in different blockchain categories of infrastructure, NFT, DeFi, researched for the trendy topics of Metaverse, SocialFi, GameFi, and analyzed the future market trend based on facts and statistics including user flows and regulation updates.

Q3 2021 is a key milestone for KuCoin, and we celebrated our 4th anniversary with all the community members, partners, users and employees at this delightful moment. Your support is indispensable to our achievement. Throughout the path we have walked through together, KuCoin is clear in our vision and we are non-stop in achieving that with our strategic plans in the coming future. In the meantime, we always pay close attention to and is in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations of the countries and regions we operate in. For instance, recently users from Mainland China are requested to withdraw their funds from KuCoin accounts, and we’re also applying for more crypto licenses to legally operate in more regions.

KuCoin is ambitious in maintaining our role as the #1 altcoin exchange, the biggest social trading platform in crypto as well as the one and only People’s Exchange. In Q4, KuCoin will launch a series of new products with social trading functions, stayed tuned and get ready on board with us to a more disruptive future!