Most of you are probably aware of KuCoin by now, be it through having registered or having been spammed with referral links. The level of advertising is almost suspect, but it's really just one of the ways in which the exchange has experienced such aggressive growth. For those of you who've been around a while, this is very reminiscent of Binance's infancy just several months ago. Daily exchange volume has increased from 15m to an average of 55m in less than two weeks, peaking at 70m after the Deep Brain Chain ICO was launched on Friday.
Why KuCoin? One of Binance's novel ideas was creation of the fee reducing BNB token, with a supply that is reduced quarterly through a buy back program. KuCoin has taken this many steps further. In addition to fee reduction (the tokens are not spent like BNB!) holders of KuCoinShares (KCS token) will receive DAILY dividends of the exchange's revenue. The amount of dividends you receive will be proportional to the number of KCS you own. Currently, KCS holders receive 50% of the exchange's collected fees. The way this works is that you are paid in coins, proportionate to the amount of trade volume each coin had. If BTC does half of the day's trade volume, half of your dividends will be paid in BTC. The 50% figure will diminish incrementally as the exchange's daily volume increases, but it still becomes increasingly profitable.
You can view the dividend rates on this spreadsheet, created by /u/NeoFattener
https://www.reddit.com/r/kucoin/comments/7ngtdu/10k_kcs_can_set_you_up_for_life_with_passive/Furthermore, the team will be instituting a quarterly buyback program with profits this March. Exact details have yet to be released.
Additional Math: At the time of this writing, 10k KCS costs 35000 USD. KuCoin is currently averaging 60m volume per day, meaning a 35000$ investment will net you 2k per year. Roughly 5%. Fairly paltry.
KuCoin is where Binance was 6 months ago. Binance now averages 3 billion dollars in daily trade volume. If KuCoin can attain that, a 35k TODAY investment will pay 32k per year. That is 90%.
For reference, NEO pays less than 5% per year in passive income through GAS generation. QTUM is 5.5%. PIVX and DASH are slightly more if you can afford the high tier nodes. ETH is projected to yield between 3-5% when Proof of Stake is released. This means that if KuCoin reaches Binance-tier volume, the KCS will still be a better buy (in terms of passive income) than NEO or ETH, all the way up to 40 dollars. It's less than 4 now. We are quite early. Even if this exchange was to stagnate and never rise above 60m daily volume, your earnings will be similar to that of most other passive income mechanisms in crypto.
But wait, there's so much more. All of these calculations were based on the valuations of the coins at the time you receive them. If you're bullish about the overall market, the sum average value of those coins will increase with time. Every coin on CMC that existed in early 2017 was worth exponentially less than it is now. $100 in Verge last January is now worth roughly 500k. So your 90% annual returns could end up being astronomically more.
Why I believe KuCoin will succeed:
Binance's rapid ascent can largely be attributed to their customer service, community engagement, frequent coin listings, and of course the BNB token. KuCoin boasts all of these features and more. I find the UI to be smoother than any other exchange I've used. Customer support is available most hours. There are ongoing trading competitions and coin polls. Additionally, KuCoin has listed all of the recent NEO ICOs on their day of release. Most exchanges have yet to integrate the NEP5 token wallets. They even have NEO pairings for most coins, which is good to see as NEO will become a dominant coin in 2018.
Crypto is still growing. If you haven't cashed out yet you likely agree with this sentiment. It's not far fetched to say this exchange could reach 5-10b in daily volume by year's end.
The team behind KuCoin is topnotch. Michael Gan was an executive at Alipay and helped scale the network to accommodate some 100 million customers. And as you can see, they are well ahead of their road map. Very accessible in the telegram as well if you care to chat.
https://intro.kucoin.com/I should note, as someone else invariably will, the site has been experiencing issues the past several days. This can mostly be attributed to the fact that the userbase has grown exponentially in just the last two weeks. The team is currently working around the clock to improve the infrastructure, and I have no doubt they will. Binance experienced growing pains all the same. And this is the part where I shill my referral code. I've spent a lot of time contemplating this exchange and have recently decided to invest heavily in it. Keep in mind, when someone else posts a write-up to this sub, 99% of the time it's because they want you to buy their coin. Anonymous interactions are always transactional in some form. It's an investment of their time for your purchase. Should the coin fail, you lose money. You don't lose anything by using my code. 1hvd8
p.s. They are listing Raiblocks in 1-2 days