Gate.io Review Australia: Is It Worth Using?
Last Updated on December 24, 2023 by Kevin GrovesIf you’re into your altcoin trading and investing then Gate.io will be an attractive exchange. Whilst it boasts 1,600+ crypto assets, it does come with its downsides for Australian altcoin traders.
Read our full Gate.io review to see if it’s the right exchange for you.
The Bottom Line
Gate.io is a crypto exchange with a robust suite of world-class features and trading markets. With 1,600+ supported digital assets that can be traded across 1,600+ markets, Gate.io will be highly attractive for serious altcoin traders.
Gate.io’s strengths lie in its technically robust and well-developed blockchain-based services and features that cater to serious traders. There is also an abundance of financial products to further grow your crypto holdings that make its competition look rather weak. Gate.io markets itself as a one-stop shop for all your crypto needs and executes this very well.
However, like most global crypto exchanges, some of its services are not well suited for Australian users. Fiat withdrawals to a bank account are not supported and zero AUD/crypto trading pairs are available. Customer support is also lacking. Therefore, residents may opt to find another exchange in Australia with better payment methods.
Gate.io Pros:
- Wide range of coin selection
- Global exchange with significant liquidity.
- Advanced trading available
- Supports AUD payments.
Gate.io Cons:
- Unregulated in Australia.
- Overwhelming for beginners
- Had suffered a security breach in the past
Gate.io Pros Explained
- Wide range of coin selection: Gate.io supports over 1,600 digital assets, including top coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, as well as exotics.
- Competitive trading fees: Compared to the industry average, its 0.2% maker and taker fees are among the lowest on the market.
- Global exchange: Gate.io is a globally-recognized exchange with over 12 million customers across 100+ locations worldwide including Australia.
- Advanced trading available: Experienced traders and investors have access to advanced trading markets and features such as margin, leverage tokens, contracts, and perpetual futures trading.
- Supports AUD payments: Strong support for AUD where it can be deposited and used to buy cryptocurrencies.
Gate.io Cons Explained
- Unregulated exchange: Gate.io holds no regulatory license in Australia.
- Overwhelming for beginners: The Gate.io trading interface is user-friendly, but it requires a decent knowledge of crypto trading to operate, making it potentially overwhelming for beginners.
- Has been hacked in the past: In 2018, Gate.io was hacked by North Korean hackers for around $230 million.
- No fiat withdrawal: While Gate.io supports fiat deposits using AUD, the exchange doesn’t allow AUD withdrawals.
Who Should Use Gate.io Exchange?
Gate.io is suitable for experienced traders and investors who have been active in the crypto industry for a while. Altcoins traders in particular will find the 1,600+ supported assets very attractive which combine well with the cheap maker and taker fees. In addition to the wide asset range, Gate.io provides all the features and markets that advanced users will be looking for in an exchange.
Overall, Gate.io is probably too complex for beginners, but some features that newcomers could use include the spot market, interest-earning wallets, and NFT marketplace. If you’re buying cryptocurrencies for the first time then you will be better suited to a local crypto platform such as Swyftx or CoinSpot that is regulated by AUSTRAC and provide beginner-friendly experiences.
At A Glance
Here is a quick summary of Gate.io.
| Exchange Name | Gate.io |
| Supported Countries | Worldwide (including Australia) |
| Fiat Currencies Supported | EUR, GBP, CHF, AUD, CAD, JPY |
| Supported Cryptocurrencies | 1,600+ |
| Markets | Spot, margin, leveraged tokens, futures |
| Deposit Methods | Credit card, bank transfer via PayID, crypto |
| Deposit Fees | None |
| Trading Fees | 0.2% (maker) & 0.2% (taker) |
| Withdrawal Fees | None |
| Customer Service | Email, live chat |
| Mobile App | Yes (Android and iOS) |
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What Is Gate.io?
The Cayman Island-based Gate.io was founded in 2013 by Lin Han and currently has over 12 million customers across the world including Australia. Gate.io presents itself as a one-stop shop for crypto traders and investors of all levels. The popular trading platform hosts a wide variety of products and services ranging from advanced trading markets (spot, margin, contracts, leveraged tokens, and perpetual futures) to an NFT marketplace to excellent financial management features.
Today, Gate.io consistently ranks among the top cryptocurrency exchanges because of its high trading volume and popularity. In terms of trading volume and liquidity, Gate.io is also among the largest exchanges. Currently, CoinMarketCap ranks the exchange as #11 with a daily trading volume of $862 million and an average liquidity of score of 540.
Gate.io Features Reviewed (Here’s Our Expert Opinion)
HODL & Earn is good but not great
The HODL & Earn feature is one of the many financial management products that allow you to easily grow your crypto holdings. The blockchain-based feature allows you to lock up crypto assets over the different duration to obtain passive rewards. 120+ coins are supported including TRON, EOS, and ALGO, with Annual Percentage Yields (APY) ranging from 4% to 200%. The longer the duration you commit your crypto, the higher the yields are.
Overall, the vastness and flexibility Gate.io’s HODL & Earn feature reminded us of Binance Australia Earn module.
Trade rebates are good for big traders only
On Gate.io, institutional investors and high-volume traders can trade huge amounts of cryptocurrencies over the OTC desk. With Gate.io OTC trading, you enjoy deep liquidity, tighter spreads, and instant settlements regardless of the order sizes. At the same time, all crypto trades using OTC are free.
The current minimum amount for a single transaction on Gate.io’s OTC is $100,000 (or its AUD equivalent), which is significantly lower than Binance’s $200,000 minimum for OTC trades. This makes it a more viable option for OTC customers in Australia to access.
Contract trading for experienced traders to use leverage
Seasoned investors on Gate.io who want to earn profits from advanced markets can leverage the platform’s perpetual contracts trading feature. In simple terms, this is Gate.io’s futures trading market that allows you to access perpetual futures contracts like the USDT-M Futures and BTC-M Futures.
Crypto trading bots to automate your strategy
If you’re a Gate.io user, you can use (or copy someone else’s) their excellent crypto trading bots to automate trades in the futures market. With these bots, you can easily automate open and close orders without watching the market all the time, making the feature suitable if you have limited crypto experience.
There are very few crypto exchanges in Australia that provide strategy bots for the futures market. This makes Gate.io an even more desirable option for seasoned traders. KuCoin, Phemex, and Bybit are three other exchanges that also provide this service but the options thereafter are lacking.
P2P trading (useful for the variety of payment methods)
You can connect and trade directly with other users on the exchange via the Gate.io Peer-to-Peer (P2P) marketplace. This feature offers instant buying and selling of cryptocurrencies with zero fees.
Gate.io’s P2P system is similar to those facilitated by other platforms like Binance Australia and OKX. As a seller, you advertise the crypto you have and sell it to them in exchange for payments in your preferred payment option. While Gate.io’s P2P solution supports options like PayPal, SWIFT, and Google Pay, it doesn’t support the AUD currency. So, you’ll have to factor in a conversion fee if you use any supported payment methods.
Copy trading to learn and follow the best
Like other popular copy trading exchanges like eToro Australia, Gate.io offers copy trading for beginner investors to mirror and execute trades from expert traders. The copy trading feature is available in advanced markets, and users can copy trades manually or automate trades using a strategy bot.
Copy trading is free on Gate.io, but 5% of the trading profit is given to the strategy creator when the copied trade ends, which is lower than the 8% commission on the Bitget exchange.
Liquidity mining to earn a little extra
Liquidity mining is another way to earn passive income on Gate.io. The exchange has a liquidity pool where you can provide liquidity using any of the supported dual assets. The top assets include UFI/USDT, BIRD/USDT, and ICE/ETH, with 7 days APR of 1314.28%, 932.55%, and 499.21%, respectively.
While the liquidity pool yields on Gate.io are significantly higher than Binance’s, the latter supports more popular asset pairs like BNB/BTC, BNB/BCH, BTC/BUSD, etc.
The Gate native token
The Gate Token (GT) is the Gate.io exchange’s utility token that powers its entire ecosystem. The token offers various discounts and privileges to holders, including trading fee discounts, VIP membership, and participation in Gate.io activities.
The GT Token is similar to the Binance token (BNB) and can also be staked for periodic rewards as part of Gate.io’s earn program. Interestingly, users can save about 33% off Gate.io trading fees when they hold the GT Token, which is a better offering than Binance’s BNB’s 25% discount. In terms of popularity, the GT Token is nowhere near as popular or widely used as the BNB Token.
Gate.io Fees (how much are they?)
Deposit & withdrawal fees
Crypto transfers to your Gate.io wallet are free. For deposits of fiat currencies via bank transfer (PayID), the platform will charge an expensive fee between 2% to 2.6% of the transaction amount. Debit and credit card payments attract a flat fee of $1.44 AUD which is cheaper than most other exchanges where fees typically range between 2% and 4%.
On the other hand, there are no Gate.io fees to withdraw cryptocurrencies to an external wallet. However, a standard mining fee will apply depending on the coin and network congestion. For example, the BTC withdrawal fee on Gate.io is 0.00004400 BTC, while USDT withdrawal attracts a 0.017 USDT fee.
Trading fees
Gate.io charges zero trading fees for all BTC, ETH, and USD trading pairs on the spot market. Trading the BTC/USDT in the spot market and BTC-M pairs in the futures market are also free. All P2P trades on Gate.io also attract zero fees.
Gate.io charges 0.2% for its maker and taker orders which can be reduced to 0.15% if you hold GT. Although not the cheapest maker and taker fees available to Australians, Gate.io certainly stacks up against popular crypto exchanges such as Binance Australia where maker and taker fees start at 0.1%. In a nutshell, Gate.io’s trading fees are very competitive.
| Fee Type | Gate.io | Binance Australia | CoinSpot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deposits | Bank transfer via PayID: 2.0% – 2.6% | None | BPAY: 0.9%, cash deposits: 2.5% |
| Withdrawals | None | None | None |
| Trading | 0.2% maker & 0.2% taker | 0.1% maker & 0.1% taker | 0.1% |
| Credit/debit cards | $1.44 | 2% | 2.58% |
Supported Cryptocurrencies & Trading Pairs
In terms of coin support, Gate.io is one of the best exchanges to buy altcoins. The trading platform supports 1,600+ cryptocurrencies that investors can buy, sell, exchange, and earn interest on. You can also access 2,000+ trading pairs across both stablecoins and USD. One of the major downsides is that AUD/crypto trading pairs are not supported. Some of the supported assets include:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Tether (USDT)
- Polkadot (DOT)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Ripple (XRP)
- Solana (SOL)
- Tron (TRON)
- Algorand (ALGO), and more.
Popular trading pairs include:
- BTC/USDT
- ETH/USDT
- DOT/USDT
Getting Started On Gate.io
Verifying your account
While creating an account on Gate.io is seamless, other features on the platform can be complicated for new starters. Gate.io requires all new users to complete the Know-Your-Customer (KYC). There are three verification levels and each provides increasing limits. Verification is done in different stages and requires tons of documents, including the front and back images of an ID card.
| Verification Level | Requirements | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| KYC-1 | Legal name, country, ID number. | Daily withdrawal limit of 100,000 USDT. |
| KYC-2 | As above plus uploading your identification document. | Daily withdrawal limit of 2 million USDT. |
| KYC-3 | As above plus proof of address (e.g. utility bill) | Daily withdrawal limit of 8 million USDT. |
It’s important to note that the verification process on Gate.io is unnecessarily tedious. Instead of separating verification into levels, combining all into one can help save time, as impatient users may tire out during the process and opt for alternatives.
Funding your account
Australians have limited choices when it comes to funding their Gate.io wallets. Like almost all large exchanges, you can transfer any digital assets you may have into your Gate.io wallet for free.
In terms of fiat currencies, you have the option of transferring USD or AUD into your wallet from your Australian bank account (via PayID) or using your credit card to purchase Bitcoin and a range of altcoins. Since bank transfers and credit cards are the only way to obtain cryptocurrencies on Gate.io, the exchange is rather lacking in deposit options. Common payment methods in Australia such as POLi, BPAY, and cash deposits via Blueshyft are not supported.
Here’s Our Thoughts on the Ease of Use
For a first-time user with no crypto experience, the basic trading interface has so much going on, and features like live charts and the order book can make the platform confusing. The spot trading interface, which is expected to be less clouded, was filled with several features and took some time to get used to.
Advanced traders will fancy the futures trading interface because it offers all the necessary tools. These include TradingView charting, advanced market orders, and up to 10x leverage on your long or short positions. There’s also the bot copy trading feature for automating trades, which makes it easy for you to make more potentially profitable trades if you prefer to automate things.
Generally, the platform is highly responsive when switching across the various trading pairs in the spot market. The real-time charts in the futures trading platform took some time to load, which is a major consideration for experienced investors looking for instant trades.
Mobile App Is Good Enough
To avail mobile-first users of the ability to trade on the go, Gate.io provides excellent crypto trading apps for Android and iOS devices. The app functions similarly to the website. You can register an account, conduct KYC, and trade with low fees. However, it has additional features like a “Mini App” to discover trending blockchain apps, Cloud Mining, and Flash Swaps, which are absent on the web-based platform.
User reviews on the Google Play Store (4.4-star rating) and Apple App Store (3.5-star rating) also suggest that the app has an above-average interaction rate despite its numerous features. Altogether, the Gate.io mobile app is even more cumbersome than the website, but we noticed it is highly responsive to taps and features a clean user interface.
Customer Reviews
While Gate.io has measures in place to provide users with the best experience, we discovered during our Gate.io review that both past and existing customers are thoroughly unsatisfied with the platform. On TrustPilot, Gate.io has a 1.7/5 rating, with 76% of reviews being poor.
There have been complaints about the complexity of the KYC platform, as well as a slow response time from the support team. Many of the concerns are also quite similar to our experience while reviewing the platform.
We Tested The Customer Support
Gate.io provides you access to their customer support team via the 24/7 live chat bot and an email ticket system. The live chat is fairly standard where you either choose from the pre-selected topics or enter a question in the dialogue box. The bot provides generic responses with the possible solutions to the issue selected. But you can request to contact a human customer representative. One major issue with requesting to speak with a human being is the wait time.
We tried to get in touch with a real customer service representative on two separate days and the average wait time was about 30 minutes. The agent was warm, and not too friendly, but they spoke good English. You won’t see or feel any personal touch chatting with their live support and if your responses are too slow, you might get disconnected.
Alternatively, there is a “Submit Ticket” button on the live chat app, so customers who cannot wait much longer can easily send an email query. The exchange also provides numerous FAQs with possible questions users may have or issues they may encounter when using the platform.
Security Measures We Observed
Gate.io currently holds no regulatory license in Australia. However, the crypto exchange deploys various stern security measures to secure users and their assets. Gate.io utilises both hot and cold wallet storage with a multiple-signature protocol for withdrawals. However, Gate.io doesn’t state the proportion of crypto assets that are stored in cold storage. According to the Gate.io website, there is also a Gate Secure Asset Funds for Users (SAFU) worth over $100 million as insurance cover. This is similar to Binance’s SAFU fund, which is reportedly worth $1 billion.
On the user end, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is mandatory, and you must create a separate password for transactions. Altogether, Gate.io strives to provide the utmost level of security to its customers, which is commendable. However, the fact that the exchange had been hacked in the past and its non-regulatory status in Australia could deter potential investors from using the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Gate.io deploys high-end security measures, and it is considered one of the most reputable platforms in the world. However, the exchange has been hacked in the past, and it is unregulated in Australia.
Gate.io is better than Binance Australia in terms of crypto asset support. With 1,600+ digital currencies to trade, Gate.io provides support for 1,200 more assets than Binance. The HODL & Earn feature is highly comparable to Binance’s Earn module in terms of choice and earning potential.
Gate.io is a decent option for Australian traders and investors, and particularly those who spend a lot of time with altcoins. The exchange supports a basic level of AUD support where it can be deposited, however, withdrawals to a bank account are not possible.
Gate.io is one of the least expensive cryptocurrency exchanges in Australia. The exchange charges a low maker and taker trading fee of 0.2% and free crypto deposits. However, depositing fiat currencies is an expensive exercise where fees range between 2% and 2.6%.
Final Gate.io Verdict
Gate.io has established itself as a highly secure and feature-rich crypto exchange. The products and services on offer make Gate.io a one-stop platform for all crypto trading and investing needs. It ranks amongst the best in terms of asset support and trading volume. It also stands tall due to its competitive maker and taker fees.
While these perks can be enticing, Gate.io isn’t for everyone. Beginner investors may find the exchange interface a bit overwhelming, while customer support concerns are also potential dealbreakers. However, experienced investors can make the most of its advanced trading features like futures, derivatives, and margin trading. But if you’re keen on trading on a regulated exchange with added security mechanisms, you may consider Gate.io alternatives like Crypto.com or Binance.