Gate has launched a 50,000 USDT trading campaign around a new batch of stock- and foreign-exchange-linked perpetual futures, offering individual traders as much as 240 USDT in combined rewards as the crypto exchange pushes further into traditional financial markets.
The campaign began on September 24 at 08:00 UTC and runs through October 3 at 08:00 UTC. Eligible contracts include MSTUUSDT, SDGRUSDT, OKLOUSDT, BLSHUSDT, CORZUSDT, JEPQUSDT, SECZUSDT, GNRCUSDT and USDBRLUSDT.
Eight of the contracts reference stocks or exchange-traded funds, while USDBRLUSDT tracks the U.S. dollar against the Brazilian real. The underlying assets range from nuclear-energy company Oklo and drug-discovery software group Schrödinger to Core Scientific, Generac and JPMorgan’s Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF.
MSTU is particularly unusual because the underlying product is itself a leveraged ETF designed to target twice the daily performance of Strategy shares. That means traders using Gate’s perpetual are effectively placing a derivatives layer on top of an already leveraged investment product. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has warned that leveraged single-stock ETFs reset daily and can diverge substantially from the performance investors might expect over periods longer than one day.
Gate launched the nine new contracts on September 24 with leverage ranging from 1x to 20x. The exchange said trading bots and copy trading would become available within an hour of the listings.
The expansion builds on an already large equity-derivatives operation. Gate said it supported futures tied to 459 stocks before the latest additions, extending a TradFi strategy that also includes direct equities, tokenized securities and U.S. stock options.
New Futures Traders Can Stack Three Separate Rewards
The campaign divides the 50,000 USDT pool into three programs.
New futures traders who register for the promotion and generate at least 5,000 USDT of cumulative volume across eligible contracts can receive 5 USDT. Gate has allocated 10,000 USDT to that portion of the campaign, with rewards available on a limited basis.
A second 10,000 USDT pool rewards daily activity. Traders who generate more than 5,000 USDT in eligible futures volume during a UTC trading day receive a 5 USDT check-in reward. Those payments can accumulate to a maximum of 35 USDT per user during the campaign.
The largest component is a 30,000 USDT volume competition. Users generating at least 10,000 USDT in qualifying volume share the pool according to their proportion of total eligible trading activity, with individual rewards capped at 200 USDT.
A trader qualifying for the maximum award across all three sections could therefore collect 240 USDT.
Gate defines trading volume as the combined value of buys and sells. API trading does not count toward the promotion, and users must register for the campaign and complete identity verification. Market makers, corporate accounts and institutions are excluded, as are subaccounts. Gate also prohibits self-trading, matched orders, artificial volume generation and other attempts to manipulate eligibility.
The structure resembles an earlier Gate customer-acquisition campaign that allowed referrals to qualify through either futures or stock trading. The new promotion goes further by attaching the incentives directly to the exchange’s expanding stock-futures operation.
Crypto Exchanges Are Turning TradFi Listings Into Acquisition Products
The 50,000 USDT prize pool is relatively small compared with Gate’s overall trading business.
The more interesting part is what the exchange is paying users to trade.
A few years ago, a crypto futures promotion would almost certainly have revolved around Bitcoin, Ether or newly listed tokens. Gate is now using essentially the same acquisition playbook to generate activity in Schrödinger, Oklo, an income ETF and USD/BRL.
That shift is happening across the industry. Bybit has been rapidly adding equity, forex and other TradFi derivatives, while competing exchanges are building their own catalogs of stock-linked products.
The attraction is straightforward. Crypto exchanges already have users who understand perpetual contracts, margin and USDT settlement. Instead of watching those customers leave for a conventional broker when they want exposure to equities or currencies, platforms can increasingly keep the entire trade inside the same account.
Promotions then become a way of teaching existing crypto traders to use those new markets.
Gate Is Paying for Liquidity in Markets That Still Need to Prove Themselves
Launching hundreds of contracts is one thing. Building useful markets around all of them is harder.
A perpetual linked to Nvidia or Tesla has an obvious audience. The same cannot automatically be assumed for every smaller equity, ETF or currency pair added to a crypto platform.
That creates a liquidity problem. Thin markets can produce wider spreads, weaker order books and more difficult execution, making them less appealing to the next trader who arrives.
Volume incentives can help break that cycle by giving users a reason to try newly listed contracts. Gate’s campaign requires meaningful turnover rather than a single token trade, and its largest reward pool is distributed according to volume.
But that also creates an important distinction between incentivized and organic activity.
A trader generating 10,000 USDT of volume because a reward is available is not necessarily someone who would have traded the contract otherwise. The stronger test comes after October 3: whether these markets retain liquidity once Gate stops paying users to generate it.
That question is particularly relevant as competitors race to expand their own catalogs. OKX’s expansion into leveraged equity perpetuals has already shown how technically complex these products can become when crypto-market leverage is layered on top of traditional leveraged instruments.
The Real Product Is the Multi-Asset Trading Account
Gate’s latest promotion also shows where the exchange business is heading.
The individual contracts matter, but the larger strategy is to make the crypto account useful across more asset classes.
A customer holding USDT can increasingly move from Bitcoin into a U.S. stock future, speculate on USD/BRL, trade an ETF-linked contract or access equity options without rebuilding a trading relationship on a separate platform.
That makes every acquired customer potentially more valuable. The same user can generate fees across crypto, stocks, forex and derivatives instead of remaining confined to one market.
The risk is that the products are not interchangeable with the traditional assets they reference. A stock-linked perpetual does not give the trader ownership of the stock, voting rights or necessarily the same economics as holding the underlying security. Funding rates, leverage, liquidation rules and round-the-clock pricing introduce additional variables.
Gate’s 50,000 USDT campaign is therefore more than another exchange giveaway. It is a direct attempt to seed trading activity in the products at the center of its transition from a cryptocurrency exchange toward a multi-asset trading platform.
The important number will not ultimately be the 240 USDT maximum reward. It will be how much of the trading activity remains after the rewards disappear.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
Johan contributes news and analysis designed to help readers understand not only what happened, but why a development matters and how it may affect the wider financial landscape.