With cryptocurrencies making a major push towards mass adoption in early 2018, there are a plethora of exchanges trying to win the business of current and future crypto investors and traders.
KuCoin joined this battle in 2017, and in my opinion, their business model will be VERY hard to beat. They have 0.1% fees which are already a market best, but on top of that, they only keep 10% of all fees charged. Yes, you read that correctly. They give back 90% of all fees in the following form: 50% to Kucoin Shares (KCS) holders and the other 40% in the form of a referral program. I previously wrote about how the 50% of fees are given back to Kucoin Shares holders which you can read here. This piece will cover the how to earn the 40% of fees that are distributed for referrals.
How does the referral program work?
Kucoin has implemented a 3-tier reward program, meaning you not only receive referral benefits from the people your directly refer (tier 1) but also from their referrals (tier 2) and their referrals referrals (tier 3). You get a different referral bonus for each tier level, as shown below.
Tier 1 referrals (your direct referrals): 20% of their trading fees
Tier 2 referrals (people that get referred to Kucoin by your direct referrals): 12% of their trading fees
Tier 3 referrals (people that get referred to Kucoin by your tier 2 referrals): 8% of their trading fees
Example
Let’s say you refer Alice, then Alice refers Bob and Bill, and Bob refers Charlie.
Alice is considered your tier 1 referral, Bob and Bill would be your tier 2 referrals, and Charlie would your tier 3 referral. That means you would get 20% of Kucoin fees made from Alice, 12% of fees made from Bob and Bill, and 8% from Charlie.
In this same example, Alice has Bob and Bill as tier 1 referrals and Charlie as a tier 2 referral. So she would get 20% of Kucoin fees made from Bob and Bill, and 12% of Kucoin fees made from Charlie.
Based on this system, the more people you directly refer to Kucoin, the larger your “referral tree” could be.