Gate and Pi Coin: strong paperwork, narrow Asian reach

• 0.1% / 0.1%VIP 0 spot fee on Gate's EU fee page
• 6 of 7Asian markets named restricted (not Vietnam)
• 11entities in Gate's published licence table
• 20 Feb 2025PI/USDT trading date reported

Gate in one paragraph

Gate, branded Gate.com and formerly Gate.io, is a global exchange with a long altcoin menu. It listed PI within days of Pi’s Open Network launch and appears on the Pi Core Team’s KYB list. It is unusual in publishing a table of licensed entities with numbers, and equally unusual in how many Asian countries its own help page excludes. A reader in Asia should read the second fact before the first.

What we can confirm about PI on Gate

Gate’s announcement page covers a Launchpool staking window that ran from 16 February 2025 at 13:30 UTC to 21 February 2025 at 13:30 UTC, and links to the PI/USDT market. A secondary source gives 20 February 2025, 08:00 UTC for trading to begin. The announcement says users in the United Kingdom and other restricted locations cannot take part and advises completing KYC before participation. We did not find a Gate notice describing the PI network name or confirming that withdrawals to Pi Mainnet are open; a deposit page exists, but we could not verify the rest. The transfer guide covers what to check before moving PI.

The Launchpool window that accompanied the listing let users stake other tokens to earn PI before trading opened, which is a marketing mechanism the exchange used for many new listings. Nothing in the announcement says Gate has a continuing commercial relationship with the Pi Core Team, and we did not find one. What it does show is how early Gate moved: by the time the Open Network launched, the exchange had already scheduled its own PI distribution.

Fees

Gate’s EU fee page shows VIP 0 at 0.1 per cent maker and 0.1 per cent taker, which matches Bitget’s headline rate and is above OKX’s 0.08 per cent maker and MEXC’s zero. Secondary reports put the US schedule higher, at 0.25 and 0.40 per cent for VIP 0. Gate’s fee tables differ by region, so the figure that applies to you is the one inside your logged-in account. Gate also reports a 24-hour hold on selling freshly purchased crypto through fiat P2P, which matters if you plan a quick round trip; see the selling guide.

On a US$1,000 order at the EU VIP 0 rate of 0.1 per cent, the fee is US$1.00. Gate’s tiers fall with trading volume, but a typical PI trader is unlikely to move up the ladder. On a token with a daily volume near US$2.9 million across all venues, the bigger cost is usually the spread. Place limit orders, keep size modest, and compare the depth you see on Gate with the depth on OKX or MEXC before choosing where to trade.

Licences, entity by entity

Gate’s licence page, read on 12 October 2026, is the most detailed of the four exchanges we review. We reproduce only what it states; none of this has been checked against a register.

Gate also lists entities in the Bahamas, Gibraltar and a Dubai proprietary-trading licence, without full references. Note two cautions. Gate’s separate announcement dates the Malta MiCA authorisation to 29 September 2025. And a licence held by one entity does not extend to your account: Gate Japan K.K.’s registration does not change the fact that Gate’s global restricted-locations page names Japan, and a Hong Kong trust-or-company-service-provider licence is not a virtual asset trading platform licence. The Hong Kong guide explains the SFC regime.

Asia: who is excluded

Gate’s restricted-locations page lists, among others, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, in addition to Singapore, mainland China, the United States, the United Kingdom, India, the UAE and several EU states. It introduces the list as “include but are not limited to” and says it may change without notice. Vietnam is not on it. That leaves a lone gap in the seven markets, and even there Gate offers no local-law assurance: Vietnam has no licensed exchange yet and the Hanoi police issued a Pi warning on 3 March 2025; see the Vietnam guide. The other country pages explain what readers in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia can do instead.

Because Gate excludes so many Asian markets, most of its value for readers in this region is as a trading venue for people who live outside them, or who already hold an account that was opened lawfully elsewhere. If you hold PI in a Pi Wallet and want to convert it, the route is deposit, sell for USDT, then move the USDT to a venue that is legal where you live. That final hop is where local rules bite; the wallet guide lists the security checks to run before any transfer, and your own country page explains which local exchanges are licensed.

Pros and cons

Risks

The first risk is jurisdictional. Gate’s licences are mostly Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and Indonesia’s Satgas PASTI reportedly halted Gate among unlicensed traders in 2026 (a secondary report from June 2026; confirm with the regulator). Account closure is the consequence readers should assume if they register from a restricted country. The second is liquidity: PI changed hands for around US$0.082 on 12 October 2026, about 97 per cent below its February 2025 peak, with a combined daily volume near US$2.9 million. Third, the “Launchpool” and promotional campaigns that accompanied the listing were marketing events; they say nothing about long-term support. Read is Pi Coin legit for the wider risk discussion.

How to buy PI on Gate

For comparison, the MEXC review covers a venue with the lowest fee and the opposite regulatory profile, and the exchange hub mentions CEX.IO as an IOU-style alternative outside Pi’s KYB list. For the legal frame, see the regulation overview.

Updated: October 12, 2026