Europe Leads as KuCoin Returns over $2 Trillion in Volume in Six Months

Spot and futures trading volumes on KuCoin, a Seychelles-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange, peaked at over $2 trillion dollars in the first half of 2022.

This represents a 180% year-on-year growth for the crypto exchange.

KuCoin's European market operations led the total half-year turnover with $481 billion.

The cryptocurrency exchange disclosed these figures on Thursday in a semi-annual report highlighting its performance in the first half of this year.

The exchange in the first quarter of this year had recorded over $1 trillion in its spot and futures trading volumes.

According to KuCoin, Europe’s performance was followed by Latin America which turned over $453 billion at a growth rate of 189% YoY.

On the other hand, Africa and the Middle East saw a 152% increase in volume to reach $392 billion in six months this year.

“Peak trading volumes for Spot were recorded at $11 billion, while Futures reached $23 billion,” KuCoin said.

In terms of user growth, Asia led the crypto exchange’s 9.75 million new registrations in the first half of 2022 by accounting for 5.6 million of these new users.

KuCoin said this user growth is a 659% jump when compared to records from 2021.

Other regions also recorded increases YoY in new user registrations: Latin America (216%), Africa & the Middle East (152%) and Europe (142%).

Furthermore, KuCoin said it now has over 700 cryptocurrency assets on its platform after adding 137 new ones in the first half of this year.

The exchange said 31 of the newly listed assets were world premiere listings while five were exclusive to Spotlight, its token launch platform.

According to KuCoin, Spotlight serves early-stage crypto projects and initial token distribution.

The platform provides users with the opportunity to invest in their preferred projects to gain considerable incomes with low thresholds.

“Over 70 new tokens have been added, making the total trading options in KuCoin Margin exceed 200,” KuCoin said.

Moreover, the Seychelles-headquartered company said it invested a total of $20 million in 19 crypto-native projects in six months through KuCoin Labs, which is its investment and research arm.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), a provincial agency responsible for regulating the capital markets in Ontario, Canada, recently took enforcement action against KuCoin and another cryptocurrency exchange, Bybit, for not complying with local regulations.

Finance Magnates reported that the operators of the KuCoin brand faced permanent bans and an administrative penalty of CA$2 million in this regard. They also shelled out CA$96,550 for the cost of the investigation.