Topic: Kucoin to introduce mandatory KYC (Read 483 times)

Kukoin switched to full KYC today, and now requires all non-verified users to go through this procedure:



Despite the fact that the inscription says that I need to verify in order to access the deposit function, creating addresses for the deposit still works:

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Now the verification levels look like this:



As I and said earlier, if you used to send fake data to get basic verification, then with the current passing verification, these data allow you to edit or re-enter:

There are still few that kinda meet those criteria like OkX and Mexc, but the list of solid exchanges with no mandatory KYC is getting shorter as we speak.


Problem with Bisq is that it is only good if you want to buy/sell smaller amounts of bitcoin and if you are not in a hurry. Then again, if more people start using it that woulnd't be a such a big problem anymore and it would be possible to do bigger trades faster without loosing too much money while doing that.

Wow I just saw the news. Kucoin was probably the only fairly big and popular exchange that wasn't enforcing KYC on its users and now they are gone too. Nowhere to run or hide anymore, crypto exchanges became just like banks. They will know the identity of every customer they have and that'a against the fundamentals of crypto. Crypto means freedom and anonymity and these pro-KYC exchanges are not. People should learn to use decentralized exchanges like bisq asap. (don't waste your time on the pseudo/fake decentralized exchanges) R.I.P. Kucoin it was a good ride.

I agree with this, and from what i've noticed, though i may be wrong, the number of people who use BTC in this way are more than those that don't, so Kucoin will surely lose many of their privacy conscious user base, but the majority would continue using them because they don't care about privacy.

Kucoin is also a centralized exchange, so the user base that traded on the exchange because kyc was not compulsory before, knew that one day Kucoin will make it mandatory, so they may not be surprised or upset at the decision of the exchange and some of them may just continue to trade there. But if it were to be a p2p decentralized exchange that implemented kyc, like Localbitcoins for example, they would lose most of their user base as all their customers trade with them because there is no kyc requirement and they never expected that any should ever be added.

I think that situation with Kucoin is a little bit different because many people used that exchange specifically for no KYC feature, myself included. Well, at least people around me.


That's true, but I think those would already use Binance, Coinbase or other similar "reputable" exchange.

I thought that this would happen to Binance after imposing KYC, but the number of their users continued to grow, so it seems that an estimated number of people do not have problems with identity verification and may use Kucoin (the same company that runs OKX) as an alternative, so it is true that the number of users will decrease, but I see OKX is advertised in many places so the number of users will continue to grow.

Those who use Bitcoin as an investment are a large number and they do not care about privacy, on the contrary, they may keep their currencies in centralized platforms.

Judging by the people around me that I know used Kucoin until they introduced mandatory KYC, I would say that they will loose a lot of customers (me included). I mean, no KYC was the main reason why so many people used Kucoin and once you remove that, people will rather use Binance/Coinbase (at least people I know) or just try to find decentralized solutions.

Bitget is a scam exchange that @ananyabushra has been shilling for on this forum with AI generated posts, you can check this post where that user was exposed: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62617454
I don't have any statistics or facts on how much users they have lost after they made kyc mandatory, but they are surely going to lose their customers who don't want to submit kyc info to centralized exchanges because of privacy concerns, and they have only been using Kucoin because kyc isn't mandatory, this section of their user base will go for either p2p exchanges or kyc-free centralized exchanges. It happened with localbitcoins, which eventually made them shutdown, they lost most of their customers after they made kyc compulsory, though localbitcoins was a p2p exchange from the start, unlike Kucoin that has always been a centralized exchange, but there are some similarities in the situations.

I could have sworn that even mexc had withdrawal limits for non-verified customers--but I could be thinking of some other exchange; there's so many of them, each with different terms of service and everything else.  Never heard of Bitget, btw.  Are they some fly-by-night kind of exchange or have I been missing something right under my nose all this time?

And as I already posted in this thread, I don't have more to say about Kucoin and its new KYC policy but I do wonder how many customers they've lost because of the change.  Seriously, KYC is no small thing in the world of crypto, and with there being so many alternatives (for the moment at least) I have a hard time believing they haven't taken a big hit.  Not that we'll ever know since they don't report their balance sheet like a publicly traded company, but has anyone noticed a drop in volume or any other sign that their user base has started jumping ship?

Well, This was expected from the start. It is an inevitable expectation.

I have always been repeating: Do not believe any central platform that claims that it will provide services without verifying the identity of its users, because this is not practically possible unless its team is hidden and no one knows anything about the locations of its servers or where it runs its operations from, which is what can never happen in this type of regulated service.

These platforms provide their services without the need to force identity verification at the beginning of their launch, and as long as the conditions allow for that, but there is no guarantee that they will continue in the same approach. We can find that it has been mentioned in the "terms of use" that any user of the site agrees to. This means that nothing can be objected to, and it is good that Kucoin allowed withdrawals to be made and these conditions are not imposed on those who wish to leave.

No offence, do you work with or for Bitget? Almost all of your posts have something to do with "how good Bitget is".

By the way, Bitget do not allow limitless trading without KYC, there is a daily withdrawal limit of $50,000 and monthly withdrawal limit of $100,000 ^[1] for users who have not completed their kyc.

[1] https://www.bitget.com/support/articles/360053002431

Nowadays, almost all the CEXs are moving towards mandatory KYC. I can only think of a few, like Bitget and Mexc, that still permit limitless trading without requiring KYC.

I think it is a specific display after being verified for withdrawal purposes (it has its own wizard on KYC requests, different from regular verification). If you visit the profile page, maybe your verification level status will also be visible.
Btw, was that captured on the app or the browser version? Up to what point did you verify? Sending ID photos or up to face recognition?

Nahhh I didn't trade but restrictions in relation with mandatory KYC would typically show up on one's withdrawal/deposit page otherwise it'd be a trap and we would see loads of people posting about it all over the communities.

As mentioned above, level one (previously kyc 1 or basic verification) is just filling out information which has been the case even a couple of years ago. I can only guess you were on the special case where in terms of necessary information required to use the service normally, you were moved up.


Typo? Isn't level 0 pretty much unverified?

Do you manage to withdraw your assets without KYC on your newly registered account? I'm new to Kucoin but I don't know what lvl 1 KYC verified looks like because that's what my account shows after I verified it using my valid ID. What's the minimum requirements for lvl 1 KYC verified because submitting 1 valid ID and selfie is the only option I have to verify my account for processing of withdrawal. This is really weird.

Hmm. your situation sounds different, my dude.

Accounts registered before July 15th should still work fine plus when that day pass and the account is still unverified, withdrawals should still be open. Your screenshot does not look level 1 as well which afaik what the mandatory KYC requires.

Nevertheless, I made a test account minutes before posting this just to be sure and everything seem to work normally.

There was no way for that to be possible, under no regulation would that have been possible, all AML requirements are for every single transaction to have a verified sender, so it's not like an old account could bypass this, the moment it made one transaction it breaks this and the user woud need verification, that said they did prolong this as long as they could but probably they've seen the outcome, and rather than losing all clients they decided to go and obey the new rules.

So, does anyone what could have triggered this?
https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/kucoin#statistics
A 500 mils to 6 billion in trade volume


They are letting a door opened for people who have money and don't want do go throw KYC or can't even do it since they are in some banned jurisdiction, so they will allow them to trade and exit, probably a smart way since they would otherwise be swamped with support tickets and less risk for the mess to go public cause when authorities will see tens thousands of users complaining they would probably start asking Kucoin just how many anonymous users and $ they have there.  

And fast forward I guess they will disable the address from the account so you won't be able to generate a new one unless you're verified and if you do the mistake of sending it to the old one they will probably ask for KYC, a win-win for them, either free money or verified user.

I’m surprised to see this news that KuCoin will newly introduced mandatory KYC requirements while they are enforcing it already prior to this announcement. I create my Kucoin account last week and I was forced to do KYC since they don't allow me to withdraw my funds without KYC. As you can see on my account  benefits for KYC verified is the feature to withdraw.



I'm really surprised that there's still user that can withdraw on exchange without KYC because new user is already required to do it in able to withdraw funds.

I don't think that the balance will be reflected after July 15 if someone tried to deposit funds to their old address but we can get clear information only if they update their ToS about this.

Most likely we can see a warning like "Never deposit funds to any of your old addresses or you will lose them'(just my assumption though).

I haven't used the kucoin exchange for a long time, to be honest, I was surprised to read the news about the introduction of mandatory KYC, I thought they had already introduced it. It seems that the next stage will be blocking or restricting verified users by territorial affiliation, I looked at my account and see KYC level 3

No, according to my experience with binance, if you mistakenly deposited to one of your old addresses, you can only withdraw those deposits, you will not be able to place buy/sell orders.


There is another experience after 1 year that I mistakenly deposited to that address, but it seems that I did not create a topic about it (or did not search my posts correctly)
The date of that post was 2022, that is, a long time after KYC was compulsory.

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This part seems contradictory to me and may cause some legal problems for them.

I think this KYC policy will not interfere with their system which requires them to changing the user deposit addresses again completely, so there is no old address in this case. Regardless they disabled the request showing the deposit address, if you send to the "old" address, imo it will still be swept to their hot wallet. They should be cooperative enough to accept complaints of unwanted transfers.


I think they simply won't credit your deposit if KYC level <=1.
They seem to still be making concessions to existing users, but have not concluded their policy will remain that way but will be gradually tightened.

This is from kucoin's blog article:


They will most likely reset the deposit addresses (at some point) otherwise what's the point?

Because if they don't do that, and the sell orders and withdrawals remain unaffected, wouldn't that mean that users can still deposit using their previously generated addresses, sell and then withdraw these funds?

you won't be able to withdraw your coins if you deposited by mistake to an old Kucoin address or will it not appear as a balance?
If they accept deposits to old address and request KYC for withdrawals, then this will look different than:

Am I misunderstanding what is being said or is the wording of the article in cointelegraph not accurate, they mentioned:


What is meant by users will not be able to deposit new funds? I remember that after more than a year of binance KYC, I sent some coins wrongly to my old binance address, I logged in and managed to withdraw, will deposits to an old Kucoin address be considered as lost coins? This will cause legal problems for them.

The correct wording is that users who registered before July 15, 2023 will not be able to trade after that date and all their positions will be liquidated on July 15, 2023 at 12:00 UTC.

Why the new KYC are not applied with immediate effect?

There are still a few ones[1] (which will probably follow the same path sooner or later) but I'm just not sure if they're any good, compared to the exchanges we lost recently (Kucoin, OKX, Bybit) in terms of liquidity, supported coins and network, fees, etc.

[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5414539

One important point that is not getting talked about enough is that US investors will not be able to complete the KYC. It is specifically designed to keep them out.

So the wall around the USA investors are closing.

Soon there will only be P2P services, exchanges which require a US address for KYC such as Coinbase and Binance.US, and scams.

Makes it harder when they travel tbh.

So we can officially say that there is no more non KYC exchanges for cryptocurrencies or still anything left?

This isn't a big surprise but Kucoin dragged this long to enforce the mandatory KYC requirements when all the other exchanges forced to make those changes years ago.

Question: so this will force the users who never want to comply KYC to use the decentralized exchanges and bring some real volume?

their desire to expand is the reason. I used to think that they are doing successful business due to the fact that they do not ask for any strick KYC data about customers, but now they are like Binance and I hope they have a better exchange model as their only advantage in my view has been lost.

I will try to find a new exchange until the last KYCless centralized exchange and I hope to find a decentralized exchange with good liquidity and speed in executing orders.

This was coming, of course, but it's still sad to see one of the last exchanges standing finally go. But I don't agree with others calling KuCoin a non-KYC exchange. KuCoin isn't like AgoraDesk, for example. KYC has already been there as part of KuCoin's ToS long before this announcement. That it offered a certain limit to unverified users didn't make it a non-KYC exchange. I was a KuCoin user because of that feature until I was asked to submit KYC last year.

First, Binance was the most likeable exchange that didn't enforce KYC until it became mandatory and it's like Kucoin was the only remaining cex that allows no-kyc for their level 1 users but it's come to an end. This is all expected and I've seen an image that US users are probably also out of the exchange, I'm not sure with that but someone who's from there and is a Kucoin user can verify if possible.

That's to be expected as well and that's because of the pressure that these exchanges gets from the regulators.

This is obvious push to restrict all centralized exchanges as government puppets are working on canceling cash and introducing their own digital slave currencies aka CBDC.
I don't think this is such a bad thing, mostly because all centralized exchanges showed that users can't really trust them, and Kucoin is not an exception.
Maybe this will push even more users towards decentralized exchanges and P2P trading, that is much safer and nobody can force you to perform any verification.
I just hope more developers will work on improving dex solutions and making them easy to use both on mobile and desktop devices, with more fiat currencies.
Having said all that, I still hope there will be few more cex available to use in next few years.

Or if they can withdraw what's still in their accounts, they might still find it useful to trade on Kucoin since they do have a ton of altcoins and good liquidity as well.

I'm not exactly saddened by this news, since I haven't used Kucoin in a while and have always found their UI to be annoying, but part of me is disappointed that another exchange is being forced to go the KYC route.  I knew it would happen sooner or later with them, and I know the whole landscape for exchanges is going to be completely different within a few years, but still.  This is how the spirit of bitcoin/crypto gets broken, by government's influence on the exchanges through which people can acquire it. 

Here's hoping that at least a few non-KYC exchanges remain in the next year, even if they're some of the smaller ones.  We're exiting the wild west days, my peeps.

There is no lawsuit forcing Kucoin to make kyc mandatory, but as a centralized exchange if they want to be accepted in more countries and jurisdictions they have to make kyc mandatory, just as their CEO said:
After this announcement of compliance, Kucoin will spread to some Jurisdictions where they couldn't operate before because of their previous lack of compliance to KYC regulations. The only way to trade without kyc is by using true p2p exchanges, even if centralized exchanges don't collect data now, they surely will in the long term and they may not give you the option to withdraw without submitting your data first.

When I first read the news I thought that existing accounts would be spared. However, it appears that not only are new accounts required to undergo KYC verification, but it also states that existing users won't be able to deposit funds unless they are KYC-ed too. Bummer, right? Kucoin was like the go-to spot to trade those less-known tokens without dealing with DEXs. I mean, it is always a hassle having to verify your identity and all that shit, not to mention the potential privacy concerns it raises.

It's sad news, KYCless exchanges have started to become less and less, and the options offered may not be as good as the previous ones, as OKX seems to be on its way to making identity verification mandatory. What prompted them to suddenly make this decision, they have held out for a very long time, longer than most platforms, and I have not heard any lawsuits forcing them to do so, so why now? The price of bitcoin is not that high and depositors' requests are much lower than it was in the year 2021/2022.

Yeah, just received the email earlier and its really expected. And just like what i have said previously since it's my first exchange and regular users, i don't mind proceeding their mandatory KYC.

It's very sad that my first and favorite trading platform also can't go against the mainstream of global regulation. It seems that no more privacy-friendly CEXs will last long. Especially for active traders, submitting their sensitive documents is a must.
Glad I found this news earlier before the next signature payment.

I didn't say that Kucoin was the only exchange that didn't ask for KYC, but that it was one of the most reliable ones without mandatory KYC requirement and there is difference between those two things.

Beside Coinex and OKX, there are few more exchanges that don't ask for KYC like Bitget, Mexc, Ascendex etc but its just a matter of time before they do the same as Kucoin and many other exchanges before them.

No, this is not the only exchange that doesn't ask for KYC there is also a Coinex exchange run by ViaBTC and also an OKX exchange(as optional) with a withdrawal limit for non-KYC users.

I'm sure there are more bad news coming for non-KYC exchange to force people into mandatory KYC.

After all any centralized exchange can't be trusted and survive for long if you want to trade without KYC.

The other popular centralized exchanges which still offer to trade without KYC e.g. OKX, Huobi and Poloniex soon will follow Binance, Bybit, Kucoin etc. Bisq, Agoradesk, Robosats are still become the best choice to trade Bitcoin without KYC.

This news sucks since Kucoin has been one of the most reliable KYCless exchanges left on the market, but then again that's not something that we haven't expected to happen sooner or later and same thing will happen to others. At this point it is inevitable.


Basically they will be able to 'play" with the amount they have left there, but if you can't deposit crypto on an exchange, it will eventually become useless.

At last, this is happening. I hope Ratimov will update it on his no-KYC exchange thread. I also hope Kucoin would be delisted from https://kycnot.me site.

According to the news, old users will not be able to deposit, but they will still be able to do some things:


But all these no-KYC centralized exchanges will have no option later than to make their users submit KYC documents.

Well that was expected

I don't think I will miss them. I last used Kucoin, probably in 2019/2020 when I discovered that my jurisdiction was one of those that was restricted by them, something other popular crypto exchanges don't do. So I thought to myself that It was dangerous to deposit money in a platform that has their terms of service clear about restricted jurisdictions even when KYC verification was still relaxed

They have a long list of restricted countries, I am pretty sure their trading volumes are going to dwindle in the coming days.

So that's it, as we've all predicted, this was just a matter of time. Kucoin will officially introduce mandatory KYC starting next month (15 of July)[1]

The current users won't be able to deposit anymore but withdrawal will remain unaffected.

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/kucoin-crypto-exchange-to-introduce-mandatory-kyc-in-july