Bybit vs Kucoin | This Is Our Preferred Trading Venue
Jack Moreau
Apr 2024
9 min read
Fact checked
Bybit vs Kucoin: In this comparison, we'll dive into the nitty-gritty details of both Bybit and Kucoin to help you discover who offers more products and features, lower trading fees, most cryptocurrencies, highest trading volumes, and much more!
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
Bybit and Kucoin are two rapidly growing cryptocurrency exchanges that offer a range of advanced trading options and features to cater to experienced traders.
Founded in 2018 by Ben Zhou, Bybit is registered in the British Virgin Islands and headquartered in Singapore with over 1000 employees. The exchange specializes in offering advanced trading options, including perpetual contracts, futures, and inverse contracts with up to 100x leverage.
Bybit's high-speed matching engine allows for minimal downtime and slippage, providing a seamless trading experience for its user base of over 15 million users mainly based in Europe and Asia.
In terms of restricted and banned countries, that includes nations such as the United States, Canada and the UK.
Bybit is also available as an IOS and Android app and has over 5 million app downloads, sporting an impressive 4.2 star rating with over 60,000 reviews.
The exchange offers a selection of 250 cryptocurrencies to buy and sell, making it a popular choice for traders seeking a wide range of options.
Kucoin offers a variety of services, including spot trading, margin trading, futures, staking, and lending. The platform supports over 700 cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot and many others.
Kucoin is popular for its user-friendly interface and the wide range of hard to find cryptocurrencies and altcoins.
The exchange has grown an impressive userbase of over 20 million users, with over 5 million downloads of the Kucoin app that has a good rating of 4.3 with over 120,000 reviews.
Bybit is known for its advanced trading options and seamless user experience, while Kucoin offers a wide range of altcoins and caters to both beginners and experienced traders.
Bybit vs Kucoin Signup & KYC Requirements
While Bybit and Kucoin have their own unique advantages, they differ in their requirements for Know Your Customer (KYC) verification. Let's take a closer look at the signup process and KYC requirements for each exchange.
On Bybit, the signup process is easy and straightforward. Users can register with their phone number or email and begin trading without KYC. Without KYC verification, users on Bybit are limited to 20K USDT daily withdrawal and 100k USDT per month.
However, to participate in Earn, One Click Buys and Fiat Deposits, KYC is required. Generally, the KYC verification process on Bybit takes approximately 10 minutes but can take up to 48 hours.
Similar to Bybit, KYC verification is also not mandatory on KuCoin and unverified accounts can buy and sell the same cryptocurrencies that verified accounts can.
Signing up only takes less than a minute as only basic email signup is required. Basic verification can be approved in hours and KYC verification can take up to 2-3 business days.
Bybit vs Kucoin Products & Services
Bybit’s product offering has grown almost as fast as its user growth in the last 5 years. The exchange offers a wide range of products that targets mainly retail users and professional traders.
Bybit has done a great job of creating a user-friendly platform that is easy to navigate for beginners, even though the exchange offers a lot of different products.
The central offering of Bybit is spot trading where its users can buy and sell over 450 cryptocurrencies including large cap coins and a good selection of altcoins.
For those that want to trade with leverage to long or short a particular asset, Bybit also offers margin trading with up to 10X leverage.
Users also have access to Bybit’s leveraged tokens where they can take up to 4X leverage on 30 cryptocurrencies without any risk for liquidation.
Bybit has also developed a wide range of trading bots for users to automate various trading strategies such as futures grid, futures martingale, spot grid, and DCA.
There are also plenty of strategies already created with historical track records that users can easily copy for free. Copy trading is also available for those that want to replicate and follow the trades of professional traders on Bybit.
Bybit of course also has made available futures trading with over 180 perpetual contracts with up to 100X Leverage. This includes products such as USDT perpetuals, inverse perpetual & futures, USDC perpetual & futures as well as USDC Options.
For those that want to trade options on Bybit, they have at their disposal European-style cash-settled options priced and settled in USDC.
Bybit offers both isolated margin and cross margin depending if the user prefers the margin to be isolated from the rest of their account or not.
In terms of 24h trading volumes, Bybit is currently ranking in the top 10 for spot trading volumes with over $1 billion, and top 5 for derivatives trading with over $7 billion in trading volumes.
Demo trading is also supported on Bybit so that users can experiment with trading strategies for free and without any risk before trading with real money.
For users that want to earn interest on their digital assets, they have at their disposal multiple earn products such as lending and borrowing, liquidity mining, dual asset and more.
Here users can earn interest on various digital assets including BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC and other coins. Bybit’s offering includes the more common flexible and fixed-term earnings, staking rewards and liquidity mining.
And for those that also want the ability to spend their digital assets in the real world, Bybit also offers it unique Master Card that allows for just that with up with up to 10% cashback in rewards.
NFTs have also been recently added with support for digital collectibles on blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Tezos and BNB Chain.
Bybit also offers its own launchpad for early-stage projects to launch their tokens to an audience with a higher risk appetite.
To access these new projects, users must commit MNT or USDT tokens to subscribe to token allocations. Based on the amount committed, users will receive a corresponding allocation of the project tokens.
And finally Bybit also provides high-net-worth individuals and institutions access to their very own OTC desk where they can settle large trades up to $10 million instantly.
Kucoin has emerged as a full-fledged crypto service provider, now comparable to some of the biggest exchanges in the world like Bybit.
Central to Kucoin's services is its spot trading platform where users have the opportunity to buy and sell a diverse array of over 700 cryptocurrencies and altcoins.
This includes not only the well-known major cryptocurrencies but also a variety of less common altcoins, making Kucoin a great place to explore and invest in rarer digital currencies.
For traders interested in taking on higher risk for potentially higher returns, Kucoin offers margin trading with up to 10X leverage. This means traders can borrow funds to increase their trading position and potentially amplify their gains.
When margin trading on Kucoin, users have the flexibility to go long (betting on a price increase) or short, using either cross margin or isolated margin on over 100 cryptocurrencies.
Kucoin also steps into the futures market with a solid offering of over 250 futures contracts. These contracts include options for trading with USDT and USDC margin contracts, as well as coin-margin contracts, and even utilize grid bots for automated trading strategies.
For those looking for even higher leverage, Kucoin allows up to 125X leverage in futures trading, catering to traders who are comfortable with high-risk, high-reward scenarios.
In addition to traditional trading methods, Kucoin provides options for trading with leveraged tokens. These tokens enable users to take long or short positions with smaller leverages (2-4X) without the need for taking out loans or facing liquidations.
Traders who prefer using automated strategies will find Kucoin's range of trading bots useful. These include bots for spot and futures grid trading, martingale strategies, smart rebalancing, infinity grids, and Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) strategies.
Kucoin's trading volumes are not as good as Bybit's but the exchanges does rank in the top 20 for spot trading with $1 billion in 24-hour volume, and over $2 billion in futures trading.
For users interested in passive earnings, Kucoin has developed an extensive Earn section where users can access products for earning savings, staking, and participating in dual investments.
The staking options on Kucoin include a variety of popular blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Injective, offering rewards for participating in network security and consensus mechanisms.
Kucoin has also introduced its own launchpad called Kucoin Spotlight, providing users with early access to new token launches. Investment opportunities and allocations in these launches often depend on the amount of assets users hold on Kucoin.
Expanding into the growing NFT market, Kucoin hosts its dedicated NFT marketplace named Wonderland where investors can buy and sell NFTs on the KCC and Polygon blockchains, with plans to support additional blockchains such as Ethereum, BSC, and SLP.
For those who prefer decentralized, non-custodial trading, Kucoin recently launched the Halo Wallet. This web 3 wallet is available for download on mobile devices or as a Chrome extension, offering a self-managed trading experience.
Kucoin and Bybit are evenly matched when it comes to their respective product offering. Bybit has a small edge by also offering services such as copy trading and debit card which are not available on Kucoin.
When it comes to trading fees, Bybit and Kucoin are neck and neck with competitive fee structure.
Bybit charges a spot maker fee of 0.10% and a spot taker fee of 0.10%. For futures trading, the maker fee is 0.01% and the taker fee is 0.06%. These fees can be lowered if traders meet certain thresholds for monthly trade volumes.
Moving on to Kucoin which similar to Bybit also charges a spot maker fee of 0.10% and a spot taker fee of 0.10%. For futures trading, the maker fee is 0.02% and the taker fee is 0.06%.
Similar to Bybit, these fees can be lowered for both spot and futures trading once monthly trade volumes exceed 50 Bitcoins or if the user holds at least 1000 KCS tokens.
As such, both Bybit and Kucoin offer very competitive fees for spot and futures trading and both exchanges have deep liquidity with low spreads.
As for the ability to deposit fiat currencies. Bybit supports five fiat currencies including USD, RUB, MXN, BRL, ARS, and TRY. The exchange offers several deposit methods such as Bank Transfer, SEPA, FPS, QiWI, Advcash, PIX, and Wire Transfer.
Users should note that there is an $8 deposit fee for deposits made via Wire Transfer, while free bank transfers are available for the other supported fiat currencies.
On the other hand, Kucoin supports fiat currency deposits for 28 fiat currencies, such as EUR, AUD, CHF, GBP, RUB, and SEK.
However, almost all fiat deposit options on Kucoin are with Visa and Mastercard. It is important to note that there is a high 3.8% deposit fee for deposits made with Visa and Mastercard.
Kucoin also does offer fiat deposits for certain fiat currencies like EUR and TRY via low cost bank transfers.
Bybit offers fiat withdrawals for multiple fiat currencies including the likes of USD, GBP, EUR, BRL, RUB and TRY. Bank withdrawals for TRY and BRL are free, but there is a high fee of $25 for USD wire transfers.
Those that wish to withdraw their EUR and GBP on Bybit can do so with commission fees of 0.22% and 0.19% respectivally.
In terms of withdrawal fees associated with cryptocurrencies, Bybit charges a 0.0002 BTC fee for Bitcoin withdrawals, 0.0006 ETH fee for Ethereum withdrawals, 0.01 SOL fee for Solana withdrawals, and a 5 USDT fee for USDT withdrawals.
Similar to Bybit, Kucoin also offers fiat withdrawals for multiple fiat currencies such as EUR via SEPA where users can withdraw for a fee of 5 EUR.
In terms of withdrawal fees for cryptocurrencies, Kucoin charges a 0.001 BTC fee for Bitcoin withdrawals, 0.01 ETH fee for Ethereum withdrawals, and a 0.01 SOL fee for those that want to get their Solana of the exchange.
In conclusion, when it comes to comparing Bybit and Kucoin, both platforms are complete exchanges with large user bases and wide geographical footprints.
While Bybit is the slightly more comprehensive exchange in terms of product range, offering some additional products such as options trading and its own debit card, Kucoin has the bigger range of cryptocurrencies with over 700 compared to the 350 offered by Bybit.
In terms of trading fees, both exchanges are very similar and equally competitive with similar spot fees and almost identical futures fees.
Bybit however has the edge as it offers 0.1% for all spot trading while Kucoin has a tiered trading fee schedule with higher fees for lower volume tokens.
In terms of trading volumes, Bybit's daily trading volume frequently exceeds $10 billion, while Kucoin's daily trading volume is around $1 billion. Either way however, both exchanges offer good liquidity and low spreads for a wide range of crypto assets.
Overall, while the differences between Bybit and Kucoin are not too big, these are both two well known trading platforms that have the crypto and product range to satisfy the needs of beginners, traders and more serious investors alike.
We like and use both Bybit and Kucoin for both futures and spot trading as both exchanges offer a wide range of products and cryptocurrencies.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
Author
Jack Moreau
Jack is a crypto writer and reviewer who has been active in the space since he caught the crypto bug in 2017. With a passion for trying out new shiny things, Jack is always eager to try the latest cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets or DeFi applications.