Gate.io is a young multicoin exchange run out of China but targeting the English-speaking markets.  They are a third tier exchange, lagging well behind the top fiat and crypto to crypto exchanges in terms of volume.  However, they have demonstrated interesting growth, and have a few positive aspects:

• They offer many small caps you might not find elsewhere, and offer interesting and exclusive coin drop promotions.
• Fees are pretty low, and you get an additional 10% off when you sign up through bitreview.  
• You can begin trading immediately, and withdrawals require no KYC – at least at time of print.  
• They have solid Ethereum and Tether markets.

Gate.io review

Sign up is a bit involved, as you will need to set up not one, but two(!) passwords, the first to enter your account, the second to activate withdrawals.  Once that is done, new customers may deposit in upwards of 150 different alts, which is good for you small cappers out there looking to consolidate. Once your account is funded, click on your desired market from the top navigation to redirect to the trading platform.

The trading platform is a bit…sh*te to be perfectly honest.  We are pretty sick of these altcoin exchanges using poor charting functionality – just suck it up and buy a tradingview license, your customers deserve it.  

Second, and much more importantly, you basically may not execute any stop loss/take profit type orders, which means traders will not be able to have a good night sleep whilst positions are open.  If you are buying some sh*tcoin to hold, this is not that big of a deal. If you are an active trader, this is probably a deal breaker for you.

Withdrawals are processed fairly quickly, and without the need for additional documentation.  However under your account settings you will find a KYC page which states: “Enter your identification information and customers from other international regions except china are required to provide information from their passports”.  I have had small withdrawals processed; however, the existence of this KYC page is worrisome, because it provides Gate.io with the mechanism for holding back larger withdrawals.  If that happens, you are somewhat at the mercy of a broken-English support staff of unknown location.

You Might be Better off Elsewhere:

If you are a trader.

The trading platform is pretty poor and lacks the appropriate order types for traders.  Check out binance for spot trading or bitmex for leveraged trading of the top alts.

You don’t want to get burned.

There is a general level of dodginess when it comes to most multicoin exchanges.  Gate.io is no exception. Their English support is poor, they operate from an unknown location in China, and they have a KYC process that is most likely selectively applied.  How would they cope with a hack or other challenge? Could they be trusted to put customer interests first? Who knows. Any event, you have got a good number of more well established exchanges that offer a number of cryptos for trading.  

Bottom Line

Gate.io offers a number of small cap coins that might interest some, and they also offer coin drop promotion for new coins.  There is decent tether and ethereum market volume for traders, and customers can pretty quickly get set up to trade. However, there are issues on the product side that make the platform pretty undesirable for frequent traders, and Western audiences will have trouble dealing with support.