KuCoin's Nine-Year Journey Reflects Transformation from Crypto Exchange to Digital Asset Infrastructure
As the digital asset industry enters a more advanced phase, the role of crypto exchanges is no longer limited to facilitating the buying and selling of digital assets. Beyond liquidity and product completeness, factors such as security, transparency, regulatory compliance, infrastructure reliability, and the ease of using digital assets in daily life have become important determinants of long-term competitiveness.
Amid these changes, CoinGecko Research released the KuCoin Exchange Report, an independent report reviewing KuCoin’s journey over nine years and assessing its performance throughout the first half of 2026. Coinciding with KuCoin’s ninth anniversary, the report reveals KuCoin’s transformation from a crypto exchange initially focused on providing access to various tokens into a trusted digital asset infrastructure provider for more than 45 million users worldwide. The findings also reflect the ongoing changes within the global digital asset industry.
The report highlights KuCoin’s increasingly broad role, no longer solely focused on crypto trading activities but also strengthening the payment ecosystem and the utilisation of digital assets. During the first half of 2026, off-chain payment volume via KuCoin increased by 300%, the number of payment transactions surged approximately 25-fold, while the number of merchants and service partners grew by 60%. On-chain payment activity also grew rapidly, reflecting the rising need to use digital assets for various activities beyond trading.
Based on CoinGecko Research’s analysis, three main trends characterised KuCoin’s activity throughout the first half of 2026: sustained strength in derivatives trading, increasingly diverse trading activity, and growing interest in tokenised markets.
Firstly, derivatives trading activity remained solid even as market participants tended to be more cautious. During the period, KuCoin recorded an average daily trading volume of US$1.99 billion in the spot market and US$3.07 billion for perpetual futures. The difference in perpetual trading volume between weekdays and weekends was only 9.4%, reflecting high user participation in a market that operates 24 hours a day and underscoring the importance of stable, always-active trading infrastructure.
Secondly, trading activity on KuCoin became increasingly diverse. By the end of June 2026, the share of BTC and ETH transactions among the 18 largest trading pairs in the spot market fell from 74.3% to 45.2%. According to CoinGecko Research, this change reflects the increasingly rapid rotation of investor interest towards various altcoins and new investment themes. This condition shows that crypto exchanges are not only required to provide strong liquidity for major assets but must also be able to respond to very rapidly changing user preferences.
Thirdly, tokenised markets began to become one of the focuses of KuCoin’s product development. In the period from 1 January to 29 July 2026, approximately 61% of new perpetual contracts launched by KuCoin originated from tokenised stocks or indices. The findings indicate growing user interest in conventional financial market instruments that can be traded 24 hours a day through digital asset infrastructure.
Overall, the report shows that a crypto exchange’s competitiveness is no longer determined solely by the size of its trading volume. In line with the development of the digital asset industry, a number of factors such as liquidity depth, infrastructure reliability, regulatory readiness, transparency, product relevance, and tangible benefits for users have become the main indicators determining long-term competitiveness.
CoinGecko Research concludes that KuCoin’s journey over the past nine years reflects the transformation currently underway in the digital asset industry. Crypto exchanges are now no longer merely places to trade digital assets but are evolving into trusted infrastructure supporting the long-term growth of the digital asset economy.