FTX.US vs Gate.io: Two Top US exchanges Face Off

Hey there, how’s it going? Thanks for joining us as we make our sturdy comparison of FTX.US and Gate.io, two of our favorite crypto exchanges. Both of these platforms are US-friendly, so if you’re reading this from the United States, perfect.

We’re going to be looking at trading fees, fiat deposits, spot trading, security, instant purchases, and much more to give you our winner and advice on which exchange is best for you. 

Fees

FTX.US Fees

You might be familiar with FTX, but FTX.US may not be so well known for some readers. This US-only crypto exchange offers different services and, importantly to this section, different fees for trading digital assets. 

We’ve included the fee structure below, where you can see that beginner traders in Tier 1 will pay 0.10% as a maker fee and 0.40% as a taker fee. You’d need to trade more than $100,000 worth of digital currencies in the last 30 days to climb into the next tier.

What is a maker and a taker?

  • Makers: Those providing the liquidity for trades to go through
  • Takers: Those taking liquidity by making a market order and buying at the current price
  • With all spot trades, you are one or the other

FTX.US – Tiered Fee Structure

As a maker, you’re typically rewarded for providing liquidity to the exchange through discounted trading fees (versus takers). However, this isn’t always the case, as the charges are often the same for beginners. 

Unlike Gate.io, as we will explain in the section below, it is not possible to use the native cryptocurrency of the platform to receive discounted fees. FTT tokens are used only for discounts on FTX.com and not FTX.US. 

Gate.io Crypto Trading Fees

In the screenshot below, we’ve captured Gate.io’s tiered fee structure, which shows that both makers and takers at Tier 0 (VIP 0) receive the same fees (0.2%). From VIP 2 onwards, makers receive preferential rates, and if you look right down to the bottom, at VIP 15 and 16, you’ll notice that the maker fees are negative, which means these ultra-high volume traders are in for some juicy rebates.

Gate.io trading fees

Gate.io fee comparison table

Good news, as mentioned above, Gate.io offers discounted spot trading fees for those who pay in their native cryptocurrency, GT. For example, the discount for using Gate Token (GT) is 20%. 

If you’re quickly searching for purchasing fees, scroll down to ‘Instant buy options.’ 

FTX.US vs Gate.io: Gate.io wins this round.

Sign Up & KYC Experience

FTX.US Onboarding

  1. Go to FTX.US and find the ‘Register’ button at the top of the page
  2. Add an email address and password, hit the ‘Click to Verify’ button, accept their terms of use, and confirm it all by tapping ‘Sign Up’
  3. You will then be required to set up 2-Factor Authentication, which is a security measure designed to reduce the risk of your account compromised
  4. Add your country or jurisdiction
  5. You can now browse the website with your newly created account, but until you have done KYC verification, the services will not permit you to use them
  6. To begin KYC checks, click on your email address on the navigation bar, and then go to ‘Wallet’
  7. Find ‘Increase Withdrawal Limits’
  8. When asked, provide your details, like your name, date of birth, and where you live, to get KYC 1
  9. KYC 2 will then ask for photos or scans of one document to prove your identity (ID, passport), and one to prove your address (utility bill, bank statement), as well as a selfie and details of where you source your funds
  10. Wait for approval

Please note: Users in New York cannot use FTX.US. 

Check out the limits each KYC level faces below:

FTX account tiers

Joining Gate.io

  1. Go to Gate.io by clicking this link
  2. Click Sign Up at the top and add your country, username, email address, and password
  3. Next, you’ll add a fund password, which is an extra layer of security for when you make withdrawals. This should be different from your regular password
  4. Complete the CAPTCHA
  5. Go to your emails and find the latest email from Gate.io. It should contain an account activation link
  6. Log in again

Your account is now ready, and you can trade and withdraw without KYC checks, to some extent. There are some limits regarding withdrawals, and you’ll need KYC for purchases, but other than that, you’re good to go! We also recommend adding 2 Factor Authentication to your account for added security. 

Traders in Washington State and New York State are not permitted on Gate.io, sorry!

FTX.US vs Gate.io: Gate.io wins for its KYC-free features.

Ease of Use & Feel of Website or App

FTX.US UX/UI

Some websites are designed quickly and cheaply, offering a relatively simple user experience (UX) and pretty average user interfaces (UI). The FTX exchange is not one of those. This fantastic blog post published on their website talks at length about the UX/UI process and how important it is. We’ve not seen any other exchange go into such introspective detail about this, and it’s insightful from a user perspective. 

Here’s a little excerpt:

If a customer has a complaint about a feature and we can’t figure out what’s going on, we’ll do the following:

  • Try doing exactly what the customer was doing, and see if anything frustrates us
  • Try walking the customer through their usage, ask really specific questions, and see if we can lead them to where they get frustrated
  • Think about the backlogged set of UX changes we want to make, and see if any of those would fix it”

“We’ve come to take UI feedback very differently:

  • UI matters; the website being attractive makes it a more pleasant experience
  • UX probably matters more: there’s nothing worse than wanting to do something and not being able to
  • A lot of UI feedback is secretly UX feedback: “the website is visually overwhelming” probably means, at least in part, that we put unimportant buttons on the homepage and hid important ones in settings menus that are never read.”

Thanks to this process, their crypto exchange and mobile app are very highly rated. In addition, they’ve just released another mobile app after acquiring and rebranding Blockfolio. The app (formerly Blockfolio) is rated at 4.8 on the App Store and offers some of the industry’s best data on crypto assets. 

Using Gate.io

Gate.io is a place where beginner, expert, institutional, tech-savvy, risk-averse, and intermediate traders can all thrive together. While it offers crypto derivatives, leveraged tokens, margin crypto trading, futures contracts, and other advanced trading products, the primary focus is spot trading. Low fees and an unrivaled trading pair selection make this crypto exchange the number one pick for altcoin hunters. 

Other exchanges have had a rocky 2021, but not Gate.io. They’ve rapidly climbed the rankings of the world’s top exchanges, especially in terms of daily trading volume, and we assume in terms of profit. Moreover, their services delight traders, especially those who want to try margin trading with leverage (3x – 10x).

All of these features are wrapped up into an excellent platform with tonnes of viewing options, trade history data, flexibility and customization, moving charts, and more. This is a world-class cryptocurrency exchange. 

Gate.io trading interface

FTX.US vs Gate.io: FTX wins for their attention to detail.

Deposit Methods

Getting your funds into FTX.US

FTX.US is one of the better crypto exchange businesses when it comes to fiat currency deposits (you’ll see why later). Once you’ve done your KYC checks, you can use any of these four methods to deposit USD:

  1. Wire transfer – Stablecoin deposits are free. All other wires cost 1%, with a minimum and maximum fee of $5 and $35
  2. ACH bank transfer – the first one is free; after that, it’s $0.50, though FTX often runs promotions to waive deposit fees
  3. Debit and credit card – fees around 3%
  4. Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) – similar to a wire but runs on weekends and holidays, variable charges

Please note:

  • There are also 22 cryptocurrencies that you can choose to deposit 
  • Withdrawal fees are variable depending on the cryptocurrency being taken

Making deposits on Gate.io

At this time, Gate.io offers no fiat wallets, as it doesn’t have the licenses required of a cryptocurrency exchange to do so. So users will have to purchase a stablecoin instead (it’s almost the same thing). 

FTX.US vs Gate.io: USD deposits are easier with FTX.US.

Instant Buy Options (Buying with a Credit or Debit card)

Make purchases on FTX.US

Sorry, the information you’re looking for cannot be found — yet. That’s because FTX.US is a crypto exchange and not a broker — this means they don’t sell cryptocurrencies … unless you’re coming with BIG funds! In that case, they have an OTC counter, a manual service where you request and wait to see what FTX offers. There’s no explicit minimum to use the OTC, but you can assume it would be over $10,000, as the industry average is usually around $25,000. 

Interestingly, you can use FTX to help accept crypto as a payment method on your website! This is achieved thanks to FTX pay. See more here.

Purchasing crypto on Gate.io

Gate.io offers something of a market for their users who want to buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and plenty of other commonly traded digital asset choices. 

The service used to work as a price comparison table but has since redeveloped somewhat. Now, you choose the currency you want to pay with, the cryptocurrency you want to buy (18 choices), and then a liquidity provider: Banxa, Simplex, Mercuryo, Advcash, and Coinify. It works in your favor to compare all prices and choose the one that gets you the most crypto. 

Please remember that you DO own the underlying asset when purchasing here, whereas you do not on some platforms, like eToro and Robinhood. 

FTX.US vs Gate.io: Gate.io wins.

Trading Experience

Trading with FTX.US

The FTX Exchange and FTX.US are different in many ways, and unfortunately, one way they differ is in the trading products they are permitted to offer on the site. US regulations are much stricter than the rest of the world so that you won’t find

  • Leveraged tokens
  • Perpetual Futures Contracts
  • Tokenized stocks (decentralized finance stock trading)
  • Volatility index trading (crypto derivatives)

With 22 cryptocurrencies, 46 trading pairs, and daily trading volumes in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, this is a small exchange, around 10% of the global platform (FTX.com). 

While you can’t access crypto derivatives, you can trade on the margin as long as you meet the minimum asset threshold

This is one of the top crypto exchanges for day traders, so don’t worry too much about being overwhelmed; this is an intuitive platform with excellent services for users of all abilities. 

Trading with Gate.io

We can’t name another cryptocurrency exchange that offers a better asset selection to its users than Gate.io. Of course, you’ve got all of the usual suspects, like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Cardano, and so on. Still, you’ve also got hundreds of little-known projects handpicked or voted on for inclusion by the community. This diversity of coins is the unique selling point of their business model, and other companies would love to have done what they have done by listing over 800 coins and 1,400 trading pairs. 

We’ve kept an eye on Gate.io for a while now and seen their daily trade volumes skyrocket, making them one of the most valuable crypto exchanges in the industry. If there’s any downside to the platform, it’s perhaps that the mobile app is not very highly rated and could do with greater investment and design development. 

Gate.io BTC/USDT trading view

FTX.US vs Gate.io: Both are excellent in their own right.

Reputation and Security

FTX.US Reputation

This platform has never been hacked. Neither has FTX, the parent company. The business is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda, with an HQ in Hong Kong, managed by well-respected crypto-businessman Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). SBF also owns SushiSwap (which he inherited after its founder hacked the platform) and Alameda Research (a quantitative trading firm that brings Wall Street experts over to crypto markets). Both of these add to the quality and knowledge of the overall FTX ecosystem.

The FTX.US trading platform was built to play by the SEC’s rules rather than navigate its way around the tight US regulations. Some of the great security measures that help support this regulatory journey are:

  • Whitelisting IPs
  • Whitelisting wallet addresses
  • Support from Chainalysis
  • More than $200m in a ‘Backstop Liquidity Fund’ in case of disaster

The better you protect your users from risk in the US, the more the SEC will like you.

The word on Gate.io 

While Gate.io has never been hacked, its predecessor was. Bter.com, run by the same team as Gate.io, was forced to close by the 2017 Chinese crypto regulation changes, lost 7,170 BTC back in 2015. Unfortunately, while trying to pay back investors, the price of BTC kept rising, and they were unable to clear their debts, leaving many investors wondering how their lives might be different now.

Gate.io now prioritizes security so that they don’t risk the same thing happening again. Users can be comforted knowing that Gate.io has spent much of that time ranked the #1 exchange for safety by CER.live over the last three years. It’s currently 8th.

FTX.US vs Gate.io: FTX.US has a better reputation for security.

FTX vs Gate.io: Who is our winner?

This is difficult for us to call, as both crypto exchanges have so much to offer. The FTX exchange is epic for day trading and more advanced market options, whereas Gate.io is great for those who want to trade crazy altcoins and leverage their profit potential. 

Ultimately, Gate.io is the better platform.

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