Gate

Gate is a centralized crypto exchange: it holds customers' assets in its own wallets and matches their orders on its own books. The company says it was founded in 2013 and is led by its founder and chief executive, whom its About page names only as Dr. Han, a doctor of optics and early bitcoin supporter. The exchange was long known as Gate.io; it now trades under the Gate name at gate.com.

Its own figures, published without a date, are more than 62 million users, over 5,400 digital assets and over 12,800 listed shares from the US, Hong Kong, South Korean and Japanese markets. A token that is easy to find on Gate is often hard to find elsewhere, and breadth is the main reason people search for it.

"Gate" is a brand shared by separate companies. The licensing page says each Gate company works independently, and the About page lists regional units including Gate Europe, Gate Dubai, Gate AU, Gate TR, Gate JP and Gate US. The global platform's User Agreement refers only to "Gate" and its affiliates and names no operating company. Gate's native token is GT, which gives a discount on spot trading fees and forms part of its SAFU reserve.

Gate states on its About page that it is not registered in the Cayman Islands and has no address there, which corrects an association that still circulates in search results and older profiles. For the global platform, the User Agreement (last updated 22 July 2026) applies the laws of the Republic of Panama and sends disputes, after 30 days of negotiation, to a single arbitrator under International Chamber of Commerce rules seated in Panama. It does not identify the contracting company.

The licensed entities are named on Gate's licensing page. The one we confirmed on a public register is Gate Technology Limited in Malta, which ESMA's register lists as a MiCA crypto-asset service provider authorised by the Malta Financial Services Authority on 29 September 2025 for custody, operating a trading platform, exchange for funds and for other crypto-assets, order execution and transfers, passported to 29 other EEA countries. Gate says the same company also holds a Maltese financial institution licence for payment services.

• Japan: Gate Japan K.K., registered with the FSA as a crypto-asset exchange operator, registration number 00018 (company listing).
• Dubai: Gate Technology FZE, VARA licence for exchange services; Gate MENA DMCC for proprietary crypto trading (company listing).
• Australia: Gate Information Pty Ltd, registered with AUSTRAC as a digital currency exchange provider (company listing).
• Bahamas, Gibraltar and Hong Kong: Gate Global Limited (Securities Commission of the Bahamas), Hippo Capital Co. Limited (GFSC DLT provider) and Hippo Financial Services Limited (Hong Kong trust or company service provider licence TC008572) (company listing).
• Cyprus: Sheer Markets (Cyprus) Ltd, a CySEC-licensed investment firm, licence 395/20 (company listing).

Registration, an exchange licence and a payment licence are different permissions, and each covers only the company and country named. A customer of the global platform is not a customer of the Maltese or Japanese company.

The global Gate platform does not serve the United States. Its User Agreement lists Restricted Locations that include the US, Canada, the UK, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Cambodia, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Myanmar, Russia, sanctioned countries and occupied regions of Ukraine, and the EU member states France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Malta. The list is open-ended and can change without notice.

Many of those exclusions exist because a local Gate entity serves the market instead, as in Japan, Dubai and the EEA. Gate lists a Gate US unit on its About page but publishes no licence for it on the licensing page, and the global terms exclude US residents. Searches about using Gate with a VPN miss the point: the terms make you responsible for not accessing the site from a Restricted Location, and breaking that rule puts the account at risk. Readers in the US can start with our guide to which exchanges Americans can use.

Gate charges 0.1% maker and 0.1% taker on spot trades at the entry VIP 0 tier, or 0.09% if fees are paid in GT. USDT-margined perpetual futures start at 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker. Rates fall with 30-day volume, which Gate calculates by adding spot and stock volume to a weighted share of futures, options and CFD volume. The spot rate is the source of the common search phrase "gate.io spot trading fee 0.2%": the current published base rate is half that.

Withdrawal fees are set per coin and network. Gate also sets a 24-hour withdrawal limit by VIP tier, starting at $3 million for VIP 0.

The commission is not the whole cost. When we priced a $10,000 market buy of bitcoin on 14 July 2026, the all-in cost including spread was 0.2063%, and 0.2206% at $100,000, with 10.5 BTC of depth within 0.1% of the best ask. Gate's breadth is in long-tail tokens, where spreads are usually wider again. Our comparison of which crypto exchange is cheapest explains how spread and fee combine.

Gate's product list is long; how its trading offer compares with other venues is covered in how Gate compares with other crypto exchanges. Alongside spot and margin trading it offers perpetual and delivery futures, options, ETF products, CFDs, tokenized and listed shares, copy trading and quant strategies, peer-to-peer fiat trading, a convert tool, crypto loans and Earn products. Trenches is a section for trading newly launched on-chain tokens. Its menu also includes Gate Web3, Gate Vault, Gate Pay, Gate Card, a Polymarket section and GUSD.

Every product carries its own terms. Gate's agreement allows it to treat strategies that exploit pricing errors, latency or multiple accounts as Prohibited Trading Conduct, which it decides acting reasonably and in good faith, and it may restrict accounts on that basis.

Gate publishes a proof of reserves that combines a Merkle tree with zk-SNARK proofs and posts the source code on GitHub. The snapshot dated 18 October 2026 shows total reserves of $8.69 billion against net client balances of $7.33 billion, a 118% overall ratio, with BTC at 121.6% (25,727 BTC against 21,156), ETH at 123.8%, USDT at 111.7%, USD1 at 101.0% and GUSD at 181.1%. Logged-in users can check that their balance is included. Gate says wallet ownership is shown by moving amounts set by an auditing firm, but the page does not name that firm.

The reserve figures include Gate's own assets as well as customers', which is why ratios above 100% are possible. A snapshot does not show the company's other liabilities, and a zero-knowledge proof confirms the arithmetic of the liabilities, not that every account was included honestly. Our guide on how to spot a fake proof of reserves covers the questions to ask.

Gate's SAFU page describes a user protection fund worth $500 million "as of 8 August 2025", made up of GT tokens plus major coins and stablecoins, with no published wallet address in the page text. Gate says the fund is a supplementary reserve for large incidents it cannot control, and that claims must be raised with support within 90 days of a loss. A fund partly held in the exchange's own token is worth least in exactly the situation it is meant for. Gate publishes no insurance policy and no audited accounts for the global platform.

On 23 April 2025 Gate suspended futures and copy trading during an emergency upgrade it attributed to excessive traffic, and pledged 100% compensation for customer losses during the upgrade, excluding market moves. It did not publish how much it paid.

In July 2026 a user said funds had been moved out of their account without authorisation. In a statement reported on 11 July 2026, Gate apologised for its initial handling, said its review found no platform data breach or involvement of former staff, and said it was working with Tether, other exchanges and police to freeze the funds. Neither side has published a final compensation outcome. Cases like this turn on account security: enable an authenticator app and a withdrawal allowlist, and never share verification videos or codes.

Gate collects identity information, and for business accounts it asks for registration documents, articles of association and beneficial-owner details. Check first which Gate company serves your country; an EEA resident should be onboarded by the Maltese entity, not the global site.

To leave, close any futures or margin positions, redeem Earn products that have lock-up periods, then withdraw each asset to a wallet you control on a network it supports. The 24-hour limit for your VIP tier applies. Our walkthrough on moving crypto off an exchange lists the checks before a first large withdrawal.

Gate offers a help center, an announcements page, a feedback channel and a dedicated law-enforcement contact. It runs an official-channel lookup tool for checking whether a social account, website or person really belongs to Gate; use it before acting on any message about your account. Gate's verified social accounts are linked from its site footer, including X (@Gate), Facebook and LinkedIn.