KickEx

KickEx Review

What is KickEx?

KickEx is a cryptocurrency exchange registered in Estonia that has been active since 2018.

KickEx Advantages

As set out in the below picture, they offer cashbacks on all trades and has a variety of different order options. These factors are presumably very appreciated by many prospective users.

But listen to this, they also claim to have "the lowest trading fees on the market". This is an outright lie. They don't even have the lowest fees on the market, their fees aren't even low at all. They're high! Seem more on this under KickEx Trading Fees below.

Liquidity

On the date of first writing this review (15 June 2021), the platform's 24 hour trading volume according to Coinmarketcap was USD 41.87 million. This was USD 86.9 million on the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021). The trading volume is accordingly quite good, but not close to the giants in the industry. On the same day, Binance had a trading volume of USD 30 billion...

Referral Program

KickEx has a referral program in place for its users, through which existing users can refer new users and then earn a commission from the trading of the referred users. Looking at the statistics from KickEx's website (as of 15 June 2021), as set out below, the average income per user is USD 17.03.

KickEx Trading View

Every trading platform has a trading view. The trading view is the part of the exchange’s website where you can see the price chart of a certain cryptocurrency and what its current price is. There are normally also buy and sell boxes, where you can place orders concerning the relevant crypto, and, at most platforms, you will also be able to see the order history (i.e., previous transactions involving the relevant crypto). Everything in the same view on your desktop. There are of course also variations to what we have now described. This is the trading view at KickEx:

It is up to you – and only you – to decide if the above trading view is suitable for you. Finally, there are usually many different ways in which you can change the settings to tailor the trading view after your very own preferences.

KickEx Fees

KickEx Trading fees

Every time you place an order, the exchange charges you a trading fee. The trading fee is normally a percentage of the value of the trade order. Many exchanges divide between takers and makers. Takers are the one who “take” an existing order from the order book.

KickEx charges what we call flat fees, meaning that both the takers and the makers pay the same fee. In this case, that fee is 0.90%. These flat fees are incredibly high.

In the largest and most recent empirical study performed on industry average crypto trading fees, we found that the industry average spot trading taker fee was 0.215% and the corresponding spot trading maker fee was 0.162%. Here, as you recall, they are both set at 0.90%. Consequently, KickEx's trading fees are way above average. And yet, they have the audacity of claiming that they have the lowest trading fees on the market. What a fraud.

In any event, their trading fees are reduced as your trading volume during the preceding 30-day period increases. If you would be one of the crypto whales out there and trade for more than USD 100 million during the preceding 30-day period, you would be able to reduce your trading fees down to 0.01% in taker fees and -0.005% in maker fees. But we imagine that very few traders reach such volumes.

KickEx Withdrawal fees

To our understanding, KickEx does not charge any fees of their own when you withdraw crypto from your account at the platform. Accordingly, the only fee you have to think about when withdrawing are the network fees. The network fees are fees paid to the miners of the relevant crypto/blockchain, and not fees paid to the exchange itself. Network fees vary from day to day depending on the network pressure. In general though, only paying the network fees should be considered as below global industry average when it comes to fee levels for crypto withdrawals. 

Deposit Methods and US-investors

Deposit Methods

In order to trade here, you must have cryptocurrency to begin with. The only asset class you can deposit to KickEx is cryptocurrency. However, if you really like KickEx but you don’t have any crypto yet, you can easily start an account with an exchange that has “fiat on-ramps” (an exchange where you can deposit regular cash), buy crypto there, and then transfer it from such exchange to this exchange. Use our Exchange Filters to easily see which platforms that allow wire transfer or credit card deposits.

US-investors

Why do so many exchanges not allow US citizens to open accounts with them? The answer has only three letters. S, E and C (the Securities Exchange Commission). The reason the SEC is so scary is because the US does not allow foreign companies to solicit US investors, unless those foreign companies are also registered in the US (with the SEC). If foreign companies solicit US investors anyway, the SEC can sue them. There are many examples of when the SEC has sued crypto exchanges, one of which being when they sued EtherDelta for operating an unregistered exchange. Another example was when they sued Bitfinex and claimed that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was misleading investors. It is very likely that more cases will follow.

According to information we have received, US-investors are indeed permitted to trade at KickEx. Any US-investors should however also form their own opinion on this, as various state rules could also be an obstacle in their cryptocurrency trading.