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KuCoin Claims Bragging Rights as First Exchange to Offer NFT ETFs
The novel suite of ETF products is denominated in USDT and offers fractional ownership of five blue chip NFT collections.
By Ian Allison
Updated May 11, 2023, 6:49 p.m. Published Jul 29, 2022, 2:32 p.m.
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Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is offering retail investors fractional ownership of top non-fungible tokens (NFT) such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in the form of exchange-traded funds (ETF) available to its customers.
Claiming to be the first large exchange to offer such a product, KuCoin’s USDT stablecoin-denominated suite of ETFs are being offered in partnership with Fracton Protocol, a service dedicated to fractionalizing valuable NFTs into fungible Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens, the companies said on Friday.
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Blue chip NFTs have dropped in value to some extent, along with everything else in crypto right now, but still, the floor price for something in the BAYC collection is currently around 86 ETH or $144,000, according to CoinGecko
The ERC-20 tokens contained within KuCoin’s NFT funds represent 1/1,000,000 ownership of the BAYC collection, for example, denoted by a hiBAYC token. To start, KuCoin’s “NFT ETF Trading Zone” will first list 5 NFT ETFs covering hiBAYC, hiPUNKS, hiSAND33, hiKODA and hiENS4 as underlying assets as a beginning, the company said in a press release.
As well as lowering the bar for retail investors, using the fund removes the need to manage NFT infrastructure elements, such as wallets and smart contracts, KuCoin added.
“We are very excited to become the first centralized crypto exchange to support NFT ETFs that allow users to conveniently invest and trade top NFTs directly with USDT. In the future, KuCoin will keep exploring more NFT-related products for our users,” said KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu in a statement.
KuCoin currently provides spot trading, margin trading, P2P fiat trading, futures trading, staking, and lending to its 20 million users in 207 countries and regions.
Back in May of this year, KuCoin raised $150 million in a Series B funding round led by Jump Crypto, which valued the exchange at $10 billion.
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KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.
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- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
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