KuCoin: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 3/10

Proof-of-reserves: does it exist, who attests it, does it include liabilities (a PoR without liabilities is close to meaningless), how often. Insurance fund: size, is the address public, and has it ever actually paid out. Hack history — and above all whether users were made whole. Licences by jurisdiction, and the enforcement record behind them. Every claim here is sourced to a primary document: a regulator’s register, a court filing, or the venue’s own published proof.

Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 19th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 0.80 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

A Merkle-tree proof covering liabilities, with snapshots as recent as June 2026 — but the page credits unnamed “independent institutions” and names nobody. Its only ever named attestor was Mazars, in 2022, and Mazars left crypto attestation work that same year. Nothing that covers theft. The only documented fund is a futures liquidation backstop; the “Safeguard Program” is an assistance scheme, not a funded pot. This matters more here than almost anywhere: KuCoin lost roughly $281m in 2020.

True cost of trading: 10/10

Measured by us, not read off a fee page. We walk the live order book and fill $1,000 / $10,000 / $100,000 of BTC/USDT, then add the venue’s published taker fee. That sum — fee + spread + realised slippage — is the effective cost. Separately: the markup on network withdrawal fees, and the hidden spread inside “convert” / “buy in one click” flows.

Scored 10 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 1st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.64 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 4/10

Order-book depth within ±0.1% and ±0.5% of mid, measured from the live book. Uptime over 12 months from the status page. Behaviour under stress: were there outages on days the market moved more than 5%.

Scored 4 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 20th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.22 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 9/10

Number of pairs, adjusted for quality: the share of listings delisted within a year. Which networks are actually supported for deposit and withdrawal — not merely “supports USDT”.

Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 2nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.23 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

~1,047 spot pairs across ~877 coins

Fiat on/off ramp: 5/10

Which methods are actually available per country, their fees, and their limits per verification tier — read from the venue’s published terms and cited. Where a venue does not publish this, that opacity is itself the finding, and it scores accordingly.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 15th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.06 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

EUR via SEPA, both ways. Everything else is card, P2P or regional.

KYC and access: 7/10

Verification tiers and their limits, what is genuinely usable without verification, and the country deny-list — from the venue’s published policy, cited. A venue that will not tell you your withdrawal ceiling before you sign up is marked down for it.

Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 8th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.08 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Published: up to 30,000 USDT/24h unverified, 999,999 USDT once verified. Verification has been mandatory since 2023. United States: Its operator pleaded guilty in January 2025 to running an unlicensed money transmitting business and paid over $297m. A March 2026 CFTC consent order goes further: it is permanently enjoined from letting US persons trade unless it registers as a foreign board of trade. This is not a two-year timeout — it is a permanent injunction with a conditional way back. European Union: MiCA CASP — FMA (Austria), granted but SUSPENDED. The trap in this table. KuCoin EU was authorised in November 2025 — and then the Austrian FMA prohibited it from commencing business operations (February 2026 decision, still standing). A “MiCA licensed: yes” tick here would badly mislead you: the licence exists, the permission to trade on it does not.

Product, API and docs: 5/10

API documentation quality, whether rate limits are documented, whether a public status page with uptime history exists, and the API response latency we measured ourselves while pulling the order book.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 15th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.03 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

Documented API and rate limits. No status page.