Crypto exchange Gate has expanded deeper into traditional markets with the launch of U.S. stock options, allowing eligible users to trade calls and puts on nine major U.S. companies from inside its existing app.
The service went live on Sept. 2 with options linked to Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Meta Platforms, Advanced Micro Devices, Micron Technology, Amazon, Alphabet and Broadcom. Gate said additional stock and ETF options will be introduced gradually.
Users need the latest version of the Gate app and an activated stock account, but do not need to open a separate U.S. brokerage or margin account for the options service. They select a call or put, expiration date and strike price, pay the required premium and can then follow the position through Gate’s stock-options interface.
Trading is initially restricted to regular U.S. market hours, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Time on trading days. Pre-market and after-hours options trading are not available.
One of the less prominent details in the launch is how the contracts are settled.
Gate does not deliver shares when an option is exercised or expires in the money. Instead, its U.S. stock options are cash settled in USDT, with the platform paying the difference according to its product rules. Users therefore do not need enough cash to purchase the underlying shares at exercise and do not receive shares into their accounts.
Settlement also takes place on a timetable that differs from the official market close.
Gate says it processes settlement about 30 minutes before the official settlement time “to accommodate upstream broker settlement arrangements.” The price used is the average underlying-stock price during that 30-minute window rather than the last traded price or closing price at the official settlement time.
What Gate does not disclose in the announcement or its accompanying options documentation is the identity of that upstream broker.
That omission is notable because the exchange has been more explicit about at least some of the infrastructure supporting its broader U.S. equity push.
Gate began offering direct U.S. stock and ETF trading in June, saying its stock platform had grown to more than 10,000 U.S.-listed securities within days of launch.
In August, Alpaca publicly announced a partnership with Gate covering U.S. stocks and ETFs, IPO access and tokenized stocks, saying its brokerage infrastructure supported the underlying functionality for those products.
However, neither Gate’s Sept. 2 options announcement nor its options Help Center identifies Alpaca — or any other brokerage — as the provider behind the new options service. There is therefore no public basis at this stage to assume that Gate’s existing Alpaca relationship also covers these contracts.
That stands in contrast with another crypto exchange moving into the same market.
On Sept. 1, one day before Gate’s launch, Alpaca announced that it was powering Binance’s new U.S. stock-options product. In that case, the brokerage provider was named publicly from launch.
Gate is also making price a prominent feature of its offering.
The company charges no platform fee, options commission or exercise and assignment fee at launch. However, users still pay costs that Gate says originate from U.S. regulatory and clearing organisations.
Purchases currently incur about $0.0373 per contract, consisting of an OCC clearing fee, Options Regulatory Fee and Consolidated Audit Trail fee.
Sales incur those charges plus an SEC fee calculated from the option premium and a FINRA Trading Activity Fee. Gate says it collects and passes those charges through and does not profit from them.
The presence of those charges provides another glimpse of the traditional-market infrastructure sitting behind a product that, from the user’s side, is funded and settled in USDT.
Gate’s expansion into options follows a rapid build-out of its TradFi business this year. After launching U.S. equities on June 1, it added Hong Kong stocks and has promoted access to more than 11,500 stock-related instruments across the two markets.
The new options product extends that strategy from simple equity ownership into leveraged and time-sensitive derivatives, while keeping the customer experience inside the same crypto-funded environment.
But the role played by the unnamed brokerage provider is now one of the more interesting unanswered questions in that expansion.
The Missing Broker Matters More Than the Zero Commission
There are two stories inside Gate’s announcement.
The obvious one is that another major crypto exchange is turning itself into a multi-asset platform. A customer holding USDT can increasingly move from Bitcoin to Nvidia shares and now to Nvidia calls without leaving the same application.
The less obvious story is how much traditional financial infrastructure is required behind that supposedly seamless experience.
Gate itself acknowledges an upstream broker. It collects OCC, FINRA, SEC and other U.S. market fees. Its settlement timetable is adjusted specifically because that broker needs time to process exercise and settlement.
Yet the party sitting at that important point in the chain is not named.
That matters because the broker is not a cosmetic technology supplier. Depending on the precise structure, the brokerage layer can be involved in market access, order execution, options permissions, clearing relationships and the handling of exercises.
Knowing who provides that layer tells users and the market considerably more about where the regulated securities infrastructure begins and Gate’s own role ends.
It becomes particularly interesting because Gate has already disclosed Alpaca as the infrastructure provider for parts of its stock business. Alpaca also openly announced this week that it powers Binance’s options offering.
Gate could ultimately be using the same provider. It could be using someone else. The current documentation simply does not establish either conclusion.
The settlement structure creates a second issue.
Standard U.S. equity options generally result in the delivery of the underlying shares when exercised. OCC says a standard equity option represents 100 shares and exercise or assignment normally results in acquiring or delivering those shares.
Gate’s customer experience is different.
A Gate user receives no shares. The option is settled as a USDT cash difference, and the settlement price is based on a 30-minute average taken before the official settlement point.
That does not mean the underlying infrastructure is not using ordinary U.S. options. The upstream broker could be managing positions and exercises behind the scenes. But Gate has not published enough detail to establish precisely how customer positions map onto transactions conducted by that broker.
For traders, the practical consequence is easier to see.
A stock could move sharply during the final 30 minutes of a session. Gate’s own documentation acknowledges that its settlement value may therefore differ from the stock’s closing price or its price at the official settlement time.
That creates a product characteristic traders need to understand before expiry, particularly for options sitting close to their strike price.
The zero-commission offer may attract attention first, but it is arguably not the most important feature of the product.
The more consequential details are that settlement is in USDT, exercise does not produce shares, the settlement price can differ from the official close, and a third-party broker sits in the transaction chain without being identified.
Gate is making Wall Street products look increasingly like crypto products on the front end.
The launch also shows that behind that interface, the traditional brokerage machinery has not disappeared. It has simply become less visible.
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