The price of KuCoin’s native cryptocurrency, KuCoin Shares (KCS) has been surging in the last 24-hour period, going from a $1.25 low to a $1.65 high as trading volumes grow.
According to CryptoCompare data, one KCS token is currently trading at $1.62 after rising nearly 9% in a single day. The cryptocurrency’s market cap is now at $290 million thanks to a two-week rise of about 15%.
KuCoin Shares are the native cryptocurrency of the KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange. KuCoin redistributes a part of its revenues from trading fees to KCS holders, and offers them trading discounts according to specific tiers.
The cryptocurrency’s all-time high was of $20.8 back in January of last year, before the bubble burst and the cryptocurrency space endured a year-long bear market that saw the price of most cryptos drop well over 80%. The drop saw KCS hit a $0.3 low before recovering.
The cryptocurrency’s trading volumes rose again in May of this year, and this month started to hit new records. This, as KuCoin announced the launch a coin buyback program, and a locking scheme that’ll allow holders to receive staking rewards with KCS.
The program also includes the option for KuCoins to buy back tokens at 10% off of the purchase price at the time of lockdown:
After the KCS unlocks, KuCoin provides a service for repurchasing the user's locked KCS at the price of 10% off the average KCS price (USDT price) on the day of the user's lockup. Users can apply for repurchase services on their own.
The program, just like KCS’ price and volume rise, has been met with skepticism. Larry Cermak, director of research at The Block, noted that the staking move is “a massive sign of desperation” and that he would be “really careful.”
This, as in previous tweets he pointed out KuCoin appears to be faking its trading volume – something it historically hasn’t seemingly done at all.
Looks like @kucoincom, which has historically not faked much volume, started massively faking volume in the last couple of weeks. They are reporting nearly the same amount of volume as Binance even though they are likely only at about ~10% of Binance's volume. pic.twitter.com/xKP4pb4srZ
— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) July 30, 2019
On CryptoCompare’s Exchange Benchmark rating, KuCoin has been given a “C”, a grade that doesn’t put it alongside top cryptocurrency exchanges that earn grades “AA” to “B.” The exchange has over 440 trading pairs on its platform.
