KuCoin marked its ninth anniversary this week with a research report from CoinGecko detailing the exchange's growth over the past year, crediting the platform's expansion beyond spot trading into what it called an ecosystem built around security, transparency and real-world utility. The exchange said it has now surpassed 45 million users worldwide.
According to the CoinGecko research, KuCoin recorded average daily trading volume of $1.99 billion in spot markets and $3.07 billion in perpetual futures during the first half of 2026. The report also noted that weekday and weekend perpetual trading volumes differed by only 9.4%, which CoinGecko characterized as evidence of sustained participation in a market that operates continuously rather than trading activity concentrated around traditional business hours.
Growth concentrated in emerging markets
User growth over the first half of 2026 was notably uneven across regions, with KuCoin reporting 170% user growth in Latin America and 30% growth in Africa — both substantially outpacing growth in more mature crypto markets. The exchange also pointed to its payments infrastructure as a growth area: off-chain payment volume rose 300% during the same period, payment order counts grew roughly 25-fold, and KuCoin's network of service partners and merchants expanded by 60%.
Three trends shaping the platform
CoinGecko Research identified resilient derivatives participation, broadening trading interest, and continued expansion into tokenized markets as the three main trends shaping KuCoin's activity through the first half of the year — themes that track with the wider industry's push into perpetual futures on tokenized real-world assets alongside traditional crypto pairs.
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