Futures
Access hundreds of perpetual contracts
CFD
Gold
One platform for global traditional assets
Options
Hot
Trade European-style vanilla options
Unified Account
Maximize your capital efficiency
Demo Trading
Introduction to Futures Trading
Learn the basics of futures trading
Futures Events
Join events to earn rewards
Demo Trading
Use virtual funds to practice risk-free trading
CFD
U.S. stock CFD derivatives
US Stocks
Access real US stocks and ETFs
HK Stocks
Trade quality Hong Kong-listed stocks
Stock Futures
High leverage, 24/7 trading
Tokenized Stocks
Backed by real stock assets
IPO Access
Unlock full access to global stock IPOs
GUSD
Mint GUSD for Treasury RWA yields
Stocks Activities
Trade Popular Stocks and Unlock Generous Airdrops
Launch
CandyDrop
Collect candies to earn airdrops
Launchpool
Quick staking, earn potential new tokens
HODLer Airdrop
Hold GT and get massive airdrops for free
IPO Access
Unlock full access to global stock IPOs
Alpha Points
Trade on-chain assets and earn airdrops
Futures Points
Earn futures points and claim airdrop rewards
Promotions
AI
Gate AI
Your all-in-one conversational AI partner
Gate AI Bot
Use Gate AI directly in your social App
GateClaw
Gate Blue Lobster, ready to go
Gate for AI Agent
AI infrastructure, Gate MCP, Skills, and CLI
Gate Skills Hub
10K+ Skills
From office tasks to trading, the all-in-one skill hub makes AI even more useful.
$GT $SOL $UNI3L Trump's only dog Conan, Sol chain, ecological landing countdown! 🔥🔥🔥What exactly should Crypto do? #沃什首秀美联储利率不变 #我的Gate交易时刻 #SpaceX市值超越微软跻身全球前五
1. Use a life analogy to clarify the core issue first
Imagine you work hard to open a brand new large supermarket: Wrong approach: You don't select products yourself, don't set prices yourself, just help big brands like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Apple to shelf, promote, and distribute daily. In the end, you can only earn a little bit of handling fees and channel commissions, and what to display on the shelves and how much to sell is entirely decided by others. Correct approach: You delve into the supply chain yourself, discover and define “what products truly have value for consumers,” establish your own pricing rules and distribution systems, making customers feel “only here can they buy these good things,” and actively come to you. Crypto is now standing at this critical crossroads. Does it want to be a “highly efficient courier,” or a rule-maker?
2. The two completely different paths Crypto faces ❌
Low-value path: Acting as a distribution channel for the old world
Many projects and institutions now follow this route, treating Crypto as an “upgraded distribution tool” for traditional finance.
Traditional banks, brokerages, asset management firms are responsible for designing products, applying for licenses, defining prices; Crypto only provides faster, cheaper, more globalized technical channels to help them sell their products to more people. On the surface, this seems highly efficient, but essentially, Crypto becomes a worker within others’ pricing systems. No matter how much you sell, you only earn handling fees, while the core value and pricing power always remain in the hands of traditional institutions. If they learn to use blockchain technology themselves, you might be left behind.
High-value ✅ path: Gaining control over Crypto’s own pricing power
The truly valuable long-term direction is to deepen and solidify the native capabilities of Crypto to control pricing.
The core mindset shift here is: no longer “I sell goods for someone,” but “I define what is worth being bought by everyone.”
This is the real opportunity for Crypto to break out of old frameworks and create new wealth.
Six key on-chain stock fields worth focusing on:
- Directly putting company equity on the blockchain for trading, reducing middlemen, and making it easier for ordinary people to participate.
- On-chain real income assets: not just speculative tokens, but assets tied to real business income that can generate ongoing cash flow (such as real estate rent, bond interest, etc., on-chain).
- Native settlement with stablecoins: using USDT, USDC, etc., to directly complete payments and cross-border settlements without relying on traditional banking systems, with fast speed and low fees, especially suitable for emerging markets.
- Prediction markets: markets where people bet on “what will happen in the future,” reflecting true public opinion and information, more efficient than traditional polls.
- AI Agent payment networks: intelligent AI agents automatically handle payments, negotiations, and contract execution, with machine-to-machine economy becoming increasingly important in the future.
- On-chain liquidity organizations: through mechanisms like DeFi, enable funds to flow efficiently, reduce borrowing costs, and improve overall system efficiency.
If these areas are well developed, Crypto will no longer be just a “supporting tool,” but a creator of new value.
3. Traditional finance vs Crypto: The fundamental difference in pricing logic
Traditional finance adopts a top-down pricing approach:
Large institutions, issuers, banks, brokerages, and exchanges sit together, define the value of an asset, set the price, and then pass it through layers of channels for ordinary users to accept. Power mainly comes from “who has qualifications, who has strong backing, who controls the entry point.” Users are mostly passive recipients.
Crypto, on the other hand, uses a bottom-up pricing approach:
Liquidity first emerges (people are willing to trade), consensus first forms (community believes in it), real users and trading volume first accumulate, and then pricing power naturally develops.
The most core, brutal, yet fair rule is: whoever can sell truly, whose products are genuinely accepted by the market, holds the pricing power.
The difference between these two logics determines that if Crypto merely “kowtows” to the old system as a more efficient distribution channel, it will lose its most valuable innovation gene.
4. Crypto’s true pattern and ultimate goal
Crypto should not be content with being “faster, cheaper, more globalized” distribution channels.
What it should truly compete for and build is:
- Asset issuance rights: whoever can issue new assets controls the source.
- Liquidity organization rights: whoever can efficiently mobilize funds controls the lifeblood.
- Global settlement rights: whoever can make money flow quickly and frictionlessly worldwide controls the nervous system.
- Ultimate pricing power: deciding what is valuable and what is not.
The ultimate goal of Crypto is not to sell assets for others, but to make its own assets become things that others must buy.
Crypto’s future is not about “making traditional finance better and faster,” but about creating entirely new rules and defining new values.
If it only works for the old world, earning channel fees, Crypto wastes its greatest opportunity to use bottom-up power to reshape the underlying logic of finance and the economy.