One account, two worlds: How does Gate TradFi unlock both crypto and traditional finance?

Author: Jae, PANews

While precious metals like gold and silver surged and AI propelled tech stocks to new highs, cryptocurrencies were conspicuously absent from this asset rotation feast. Faced with prolonged liquidity shortages and a narrative vacuum, crypto traders are no longer content with playing the game in a single sector. They want to unlock a door to a wealth of traditional assets, and Gate TradFi has provided that key.

Today, the crypto space is rapidly moving towards an era of comprehensive asset allocation. With major assets such as gold, foreign exchange, commodities, and US stocks being put on-chain, the boundaries of traditional finance are constantly being broken down. At the same time, the increasingly clear regulatory environment and the iterative upgrades of underlying technology are significantly reducing the barriers and friction for cross-border capital flows.

Against this backdrop, an urgent need has emerged: can crypto players seamlessly trade financial assets in both the crypto and traditional markets on a single platform, using the same amount of money?

Gate TradFi has delivered its answer, attempting to reconstruct the trading experience for stocks, indices, forex, and commodities within its native app by leveraging the efficiency logic of the crypto industry, allowing global liquidity to flow freely within a single account.

A massive migration of funds to RWA is driving integration driven by institutional demand and investment preferences.

As we enter 2026, cryptocurrencies have gradually shed their label as alternative assets and become part of the global financial market.

As cryptocurrencies are accepted by the mainstream market, and especially as Bitcoin is included in the strategic reserves of some sovereign states, the boundaries between this asset and traditional assets such as precious metals and stocks are becoming increasingly blurred, and the allocation logic of macro funds is undergoing a fundamental change.

The most direct manifestation of this integration is the explosive growth of the RWA (Real-World Assets) sector. As of January 15, 2026, the total value of tokenized assets worldwide has exceeded $20 billion, setting a new historical record.

Compared to $900 million at the beginning of 2022, RWA has achieved a leap of over 20 times, demonstrating investors' strong interest in traditional on-chain assets. Among them, the growth of tokenized assets such as commodities and stocks is particularly significant, with a total value exceeding $5 billion.

Today, the TVL of the RWA protocol has surpassed DEX to become the fifth largest DeFi category. This also confirms that the crypto space is evolving into a new scenario for the global transfer and settlement of traditional assets.

For traditional institutions, RWA is no longer just a technological experiment, but a real choice for capital seeking greater transparency, liquidity, and portfolio flexibility.

As regulations become clearer and compliance structures improve, more institutions will join the RWA arena. According to predictions from institutions such as BlackRock, the RWA tokenization market will surge to $16 trillion by 2030.

Besides institutional demand for blockchain integration, one of the direct drivers of RWA's surge is the recent extreme divergence in global asset performance. While precious metals like gold and silver have continued to rise and global stock markets have experienced a boom, the sluggish crypto market has become an "outsider" to the global bull market, prompting investors to turn their attention to traditional assets.

This yield gap is forcing on-chain funds to turn their attention to traditional assets. Investors are eager to use RWA as a channel to capture the dividends of US stocks and gold on-chain.

For example, data from Token Terminal and RWA.xyz show that the total market capitalization of tokenized stocks has climbed to a record $1.2 billion; the market size of tokenized commodities exceeds $4 billion, growing by about 15% in the past month.

BlackRock's BUIDL fund surpassed $1.7 billion in size in just one year, becoming the world's largest tokenized money fund. Ondo's tokenized silver SLVon saw its market capitalization rise by over 80% to nearly $22 million in 30 days.

Furthermore, the complexity of the macroeconomy has reached new heights. Changes in leadership at the Federal Reserve, policy shifts in the White House, and geopolitical conflicts have led to market pricing no longer following a single logic, but rather mapping a volatile asset landscape.

A Reuters report points out that the Trump administration's trade intervention measures, including import restrictions on foreign-made drones and key components, are triggering a new round of fluctuations in inflation expectations.

Under these conditions, asset rotation is becoming increasingly frequent. Investors need to pay attention not only to the growth curve of the crypto market, but also to the performance of traditional markets.

In this environment, crypto users also urgently need a wider range of assets to meet their macro trading needs. They are no longer satisfied with betting on a 100x MEME coin, but need tools to manage the risks of their entire portfolio, including hedging against US stock market corrections, dollar fluctuations, or soaring oil prices.

Addressing the three major pain points of cross-market trading, USDx helps create a unified account.

Despite the trend of asset consolidation, the trading experience across traditional and crypto markets remains fraught with "friction" for most crypto users.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are the primary entry point for most users and an excellent testing ground for TradeFi products. However, when integrating traditional assets, these platforms face three main challenges:

1. Fragmented assets and chaotic accounts: The separation of crypto accounts and securities accounts results in low capital utilization, makes it impossible to achieve cross-market margin sharing, and makes it difficult to synchronize accounts in real time due to different accounting logics;

2. Low settlement efficiency and high cost: Traditional asset deposits and withdrawals usually involve T+2 settlement and expensive cross-border wire transfers and currency exchange fees, which cannot meet the real-time requirements of encrypted users;

3. Inconsistent risk control systems: It is difficult to balance the risk control standards for crypto assets and traditional assets, which can easily lead to unnecessary liquidation risks.

In response to these deep-seated problems in the industry, Gate TradFi has provided a targeted solution by introducing a unified account logic based on USDx.

Gate TradFi allows users to flexibly participate in global traditional financial markets with minimal capital costs through Contracts for Difference (CFDs). Users trade price fluctuations rather than actually buying, selling, or holding the underlying asset, and there is no expiration or settlement date.

The margin for CFDs is denominated in USDx, which is not a new cryptocurrency or fiat currency, but simply a unit of account pegged 1:1 to USDT. When a user exits the transaction, USDx will be automatically converted back to USDT.

USDx's design addresses three major pain points: accounting logic, settlement efficiency, and risk control system.

• Accounting Independence and Transparency: Assets transferred into a TradeFi account will be displayed in USDx and will be separate from the total assets in the main account. This segregation helps mid-to-high frequency traders and multi-strategy users to more clearly account for the profit and loss of TradeFi assets without confusion with cryptocurrency holdings.

• Instant settlement and zero cost: Traditional brokerage firms have lengthy and costly fiat currency deposit and withdrawal processes, involving bank fees and exchange rate losses. USDx, on the other hand, allows crypto users to invest more funds in traditional markets with zero latency and zero additional cost.

• Standardized approach: unified assets, unified reporting, and unified risk control. Especially for mid- to high-frequency investors, fragmented financial statements are a nightmare for review. Gate TradFi supports a unified reporting system. Users can view the volatility risk of crypto assets and the margin levels of traditional assets on a single screen.

This unified architecture not only improves capital utilization efficiency and lowers entry barriers, but also upgrades risk control. All assets (crypto and TradeFi) are managed under a single account system, enabling the platform to monitor users' cross-market holding risks in real time and prevent systemic liquidation due to a single market turmoil.

A product philosophy rooted in cryptography, breaking down financial barriers with an all-in-one account.

Overcoming industry pain points is only the foundation for attracting users; a superior user experience is the key to user retention. Compared to other platforms, Gate TradFi demonstrates a completely different product philosophy.

First, Gate TradFi is committed to creating a one-stop trading portal for the global market, providing crypto users with the lowest-barrier path to gain exposure to diverse assets.

Gate is not the only player to capitalize on the trend. Exchanges such as Bybit and Bitget offer TradeFi trading by integrating the MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platform, but this is a "professional but cumbersome" route.

As the standard terminal for traditional financial trading, MT5 supports complex algorithmic strategies. By integrating MT5, exchanges can attract traders accustomed to traditional brokerage operations and possessing mature quantitative strategies to seamlessly integrate into the crypto ecosystem.

However, the MT5 platform requires users to create separate accounts, transfer funds individually, and familiarize themselves with a completely different user interface. This type of operation is more suitable for experienced financial professionals.

In the current market environment, the most expensive costs are cross-platform switching and time. Gate TradFi has chosen a more thorough "native integration" approach, with its functions embedded in the main app, on the same product tree as spot and futures trading, without relying on third-party plugins or platform jumps.

Meanwhile, Gate TradFi has specifically optimized its UI for crypto users. Switching asset classes is as easy as switching between BTC and ETH in a perpetual contract dropdown menu, maintaining both independent account records and a unified user interface. This will truly achieve the effect of one-click direct connection of crypto accounts to traditional financial markets, enabling combined management of "digital assets + traditional assets".

This is like a genetic selection process. MT5 integration connects two worlds, while Gate TradFi attempts to merge them. The former serves professional traders from traditional finance, while the latter aims to empower all crypto-native users who want to expand their reach.

Secondly, Gate TradFi accurately covers the mainstream trading instruments preferred by crypto users, and its asset pool is expected to continue to expand, demonstrating considerable growth potential.

1. Precious Metals: Focus on supporting gold (XAU/USD). Against the backdrop of frequent geopolitical conflicts in 2025, gold's traditional safe-haven asset properties are increasingly strengthened, making it the preferred choice for users to hedge portfolio volatility.

2. Foreign Exchange (FX): Covers major currency pairs such as USD, EUR, and JPY. With leverage up to 500x, users can participate in the world's most liquid markets with minimal margin.

3. Indices: Supports Nasdaq 100 (NAS100) and S&P 500 (SPX500). This allows crypto users to bet on the beta returns of US stock indices with a single click, without needing an overseas securities account;

4. Technology stocks: Focus on highly recognizable stocks such as Tesla, and use CFDs to flexibly go long or short.

Finally, Gate TradFi balances low fees with high capital efficiency, demonstrating exceptional effectiveness in reducing transaction costs. According to official documentation, Gate offers a more significant fee advantage and features a dedicated VIP fee tier. Particularly in the derivatives market, it has consistently maintained competitive maker and taker fees.

For medium- to long-term funds, Gate's fee structure is also more competitive. When large sums of money are used for stock index arbitrage, the cost savings are amplified exponentially. This low-cost strategy is irresistibly attractive to quantitative traders who frequently rebalance their portfolios and day traders who pursue high turnover rates.

It's worth noting that CFDs do not hold physical underlying assets; they only trade the price fluctuations of assets, and long and short positions in the same trading pair are hedged on a per-lot basis. For example, a long position of 100 lots and a short position of 100 lots will require zero margin. Therefore, Gate TradFi also boasts considerable capital efficiency.

In a horizontal comparison, Gate TradFi offers a larger number of tradable assets compared to Bitget TradFi; and it has a more favorable fee structure compared to Bybit TradFi.

With just one Gate account, users can trade both cryptocurrencies and TradeFi assets simultaneously. The process of trading TradeFi CFDs is exactly the same as trading perpetual contracts, with a learning curve of almost zero.

This essentially solves the problem of cognitive friction. Users no longer need to switch their minds: from a cryptocurrency trader on platform A to a stock trader on platform B. On Gate TradFi, they are always traders who profit from volatility, only the underlying asset is different.

This efficiency advantage will give users the opportunity to hedge against macroeconomic fluctuations through TradeFi trading amidst market changes, outlining a "second investment growth curve" beyond crypto trading.

Imagine that when the Federal Reserve suddenly releases better-than-expected non-farm payroll data, users can close out their long BTC perpetual contracts in their Gate accounts within the same minute and immediately open short positions in XAU (gold) or Nasdaq long positions, without having to switch between different brokerage apps.

All operations are completed within seconds, without the need for cross-platform transfers, maximizing capital utilization. This is not just about convenience, but also a completely new level of strategic freedom. Whoever can reallocate assets the fastest can control risk and even seize opportunities. This second-level asset allocation capability will become one of the biggest sources of alpha in volatile markets.

2026 is destined to be a watershed year. The crypto industry is moving away from frenzied speculation and towards profound value creation and financial integration. When TradeFi and crypto are no longer separated, the launch of Gate TradeFi is not just a simple product iteration or technological innovation. It is not only a precise capture of market sentiment, but also a strategic-level restructuring aimed at redefining the future of finance.

In this revolutionary experience, users will bid farewell to the old era of constant friction between fiat currency, banks, and exchanges, and enter a new era of "one account, one type of margin, and participation of all assets".

For native users accustomed to the speed of encryption, traditional finance is no longer that cumbersome, sluggish, and high-barrier "old relic," but rather an efficient hedging tool that can be accessed at any time.

The launch of Gate TradFi also points to a more fundamental trend: the barriers between asset classes are dissolving in the digital world. Assets are no longer separated by geography or technology stacks, and liquidity can freely migrate across the divide between crypto and traditional markets. In the future, investors' trading logic will no longer be limited by platforms, but will serve their strategies entirely.

With the trend of everything going on the blockchain, cryptocurrency exchanges are becoming an all-encompassing trading portal in the digital age.