After returning from Consensus Hong Kong 2025, I reviewed the speeches at the conference and felt a little disappointed. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to meet with several leaders of leading exchanges and public chains for in-depth discussions. I gained a lot and would like to share it here.
As the recent market direction is unclear and hot spots are rotating rapidly but cannot be sustained, Odaily Planet Daily interviewed Gate.io founder and CEO Han Lin to discuss topics such as the stage of the crypto market and trends in vertical fields. Through the perspective of this 12-year industry veteran, he provided guidance, shared experience, built confidence, and warned of risks for the majority of participants. Based on his many years of experience in guiding the operation of large-scale trading platforms, Han Lin also elaborated on Gate.ios focus and progress in various business lines, the listing process and behind-the-scenes work details, the value support of the platform currency GT, and the origin of sponsoring the F1 Red Bull team.
For the sake of clarity, Odaily Planet Daily has summarized the interview questions and answers as follows. Enjoy~
Odaily Planet Daily: Trump took office, favorable policies were steadily implemented, there was no news stimulus in the short term, and no new funds entered the market, and the market as a whole entered a period of stagflation. How do you judge the next stage of the market ? Will there be a second wave of bull market in 25 years? What indicators can be used as the basis and reference for trading decisions?
Han Lin: My feeling is that the market conditions are actually quite good .
In the very short term, it will be worse on weekends and holidays. But it will start to improve around November 2023, and in 2024, driven by memes, it will be good all year. This year, after Trump issued a coin, celebrities will follow suit.
The concept of blockchain itself is boring and difficult for ordinary people to accept, but coins, especially Memes with huge increases, allow newcomers to enter the market with interest, and then it will be very easy to discover mainstream assets such as Bitcoin. When risk appetite returns and turns to long-termism, part of the funds brought in by Memes will eventually flow back to mainstream coins that are more value-preserving.
It is very difficult to predict the future market trend. I believe that as virtual assets become mainstream, they will be greatly affected by macro-political and financial events .
However, being in the exchange, I can clearly sense the market sentiment - in the bear market of 2023, it seemed that no matter what activities or publicity we did, it was difficult to arouse the response of users, and the traffic of the entire industry declined sharply. After the inscription ignited the market at the end of 2023, and then in the bull market of 2024, the sentiment was obviously high.
Now, many financial operations are moving to the chain, and data is easier to monitor from the outside. For example, if we only look at the daily issuance of coins, it is very large. This is consistent with the data trend of CEX.
Odaily Planet Daily: Many veteran traders and coin holders are looking forward to the rise of altcoins, but the broader view is that altcoins are clearly in decline . What do you think?
Han Lin: Gate.io started in 2013. At that time, the definition of altcoins was copy coins, such as the earliest Meme coin DOGE, and some forked coins with copied codes. In the long run, only a very small number of top coins survived, and the value retention rate was very poor. Especially Meme, which relied on hot spots and community consensus, rose and fell quickly. In contrast, mainstream coins, after ups and downs, the overall trend is upward.
Therefore, we do not particularly recommend that novice users participate in copycat projects . In addition to selecting the target product, you can also try financial management and other income methods suitable for non-professional users to reduce the risk . Users who are experienced in finance can also make good use of a variety of financial tools on Gate.io, such as contract products.
Odaily Planet Daily: Speaking of Meme, it has been a driving force for capital flow since the second half of last year. But with Trumps issuance of coins, Meme has entered the next stage. Do you think most retail investors still have ways and opportunities to participate in Meme ?
Han Lin: Divided into long and short term.
In the long run, you can participate in mainstream currencies to earn interest through methods such as regular investment and financial management.
In the short term, I want to emphasize that trading requires professional skills, such as contract trading.
Meme, it is not recommended for newbies to rush in blindly, the probability of eventually becoming a mainstream player is very small.
Odaily Planet Daily: At the end of 2024, various institutions predicted that 2025 would be the big year for Web3×AI , but the AI Agent sector has fallen by more than 80% from its high point. What kind of products or events will enable this field to make a comeback?
Han Lin: There has never been a shortage of concepts and hype in the Web3 field. The most important thing is to see the degree of integration between real needs and the actual solutions provided by the products .
Gate.io is actually using AI to handle some practical tasks, such as data analysis, which includes both market data and platform operation data.
Some very professional quantitative institutions and other traditional financial companies are using neural algorithms in traditional finance to assist in choosing trading directions. However, there is still a long way to go before they can assist ordinary users in making trading decisions.
Odaily Planet Daily: What investments have you made recently? Which sub-sectors and directions will you pay more attention to? What suggestions do you have for CEX users?
Han Lin: My personal investment energy is limited, and most of my time I am thinking about how the platform can provide more complete services.
But our venture capital department Gate Ventures will focus on ecosystem-related projects and look at a large number of targets, such as the previous L2 (solving expansion issues), zk+ chips, Crypto payments, wallets and other infrastructure and technology innovation-driven projects .
Gate.io will provide financial support to Gate Ventures, and Ventures will independently execute the investment decision-making process. In terms of linkage, if the invested project can meet the listing standards, the Ventures previous due diligence and other work results will also be reused.
Odaily Planet Daily: The next question is, let’s turn from the industry to Gate.io. What is Gate.io’s overall business goal in 2025?
Han Lin: Gate.io’s strength lies in its first launch and complete product features. In 2013, it supported dozens of currencies, which was something very few platforms could do at the time. We maintain our advantage in this regard - we continue to provide users with spot trading opportunities for high-quality assets.
In terms of contracts, Gate.io started to work on it last year. This will be the key business for the next 25 years.
The Web3 industry follows the path of traditional finance. The contract transaction volume was small in the early stage, but it quickly surpassed the spot market. Crypto finance is developing faster. Compared with traditional finance, it is normal for the contract transaction volume to be 5 to 6 times that of the spot market. Gate.io started from a 2% market share (contract business) last year to the current 5 to 6%, and the goal is 10% by the end of 25 years .
In addition, Gate.io is also actively developing ETF and options businesses, but they are more targeted at professional investors.
Odaily Planet Daily: In the users impression, Gate.io is very sensitive to hot spots and is fast in listing coins . Before, during and after the decision on whether to list a coin, what kind of judgment and risk control process are needed from which departments? What is the team size and division of labor? If spot trading is listed, how to collect a large number of chips in a short period of time to support liquidity? Will you communicate with the team and market makers?
Han Lin: The listing department is divided into two groups, one for finding high-quality bids and the other for due diligence , with dozens of people in each group. Listing projects are further divided into two categories:
First, for traditional teams, the due diligence team will focus on and cross-examine the team background, investor situation, token distribution rules, business model, risk control measures, etc. to confirm the long-term sustainability of the project;
The second type is community-driven projects, which may have already been launched on DEX. The listing department will also evaluate community popularity, user acceptance, on-chain data, chip dispersion, etc., and will also provide risk warnings to users.
As for the initial liquidity, usually the tokens have already been circulated externally and there is a reserve amount in advance; there are also some first-launch projects that have airdropped tokens to users, and the community already holds enough chips.
In addition, Gate.io has hundreds of cooperative market makers. Although they will not directly connect to projects, they will make introductions if the project needs it.
Odaily Planet Daily: In terms of product sectors other than trading, such as financial management, Startup, Launchpool, copy trading, coin circle, wallets, etc., what progress is worth users attention in the near future? From Gate.ios own perspective, which sector has the highest priority ?
Han Lin: The entire industry has developed rapidly during this period, especially DEX and wallets .
The product Gate.io has done a lot of work on and started very early is wallets. We started to work on multi-chain wallets in 2018. At that time, there was one wallet for each coin in the market, and few mobile wallets were available. In the DeFi Summer of 2020, Gate.io started to work on DEX-related platforms, and within a few years, gradually transferred exchange functions (Meme transactions, transfers, financial management, etc.) to wallets, while integrating the two product ends to follow the industry trend of blurring the boundaries between DeFi and CeFi.
The Gate.io wallet also has a special feature that maps the addresses of various chains in its wallet into one on the backend. For users, even if they fill in the addresses of other chains when transferring money, they can still receive the coins.
Odaily Planet Daily: GT has hit new highs again and again . What enabling operations or fundamentals have helped it achieve? How do you attribute it?
Han Lin: GT is both the Gate.io platform currency and the GateChain native currency.
In 2018, we wanted to build an innovative chain, not an ordinary copycat chain, so we chose the direction of user asset protection , including anti-theft, retrievability, compatibility with EVM, support for DeFi applications, etc. Last year, GateChain supported L2.
Users participate in the platform and the ecosystem, and naturally have an understanding of the platform currency. Once they hold it, they will receive daily airdrops and other benefits. Seeing that Gate.io distributes profits to holders, they will have a good impression of GT, which will increase their holdings and become more deeply bound. The price of GT will steadily rise, thus forming a positive cycle .
Of course, the market has ups and downs, and buying platform coins also has corresponding risks. We will provide risk warnings and users can make their own judgments.
Odaily Planet Daily: Gate.ios external cooperation includes the financial technology industry and brands such as sports stars, such as recently becoming the official sponsor of the F1 Red Bull team . How was this cooperation brought about? Can you share some interesting stories from the contact between the two parties to the final agreement? What is the general conversion rate of Web3 companies in traditional advertising channels?
Han Lin: I am a technical person, and Gate.ios previous market style was relatively low-key. At the same time, Gate.ios products in the past few years still had gaps, which needed to be filled from scratch. You will observe that our pioneering functions such as financial management, quantitative, dynamic, and live broadcast were quickly recognized by old users. There are also some boring but important behind-the-scenes work that users do not perceive, such as the reserve fund certificate that we started in 2020, so that users can judge whether the platform has privately transferred funds.
In 2024, as product functions gradually improved and new users from around the world entered the market , we began to focus on brand cooperation. For example, in the first half of 2024, we sponsored the Inter Milan football team, as both parties shared the same philosophy of pursuing championships. In the second half of the year, we came into contact with the F1 field and found that F1 used a lot of the latest technologies. During the Token 2049 in the UAE and Singapore, the two groups of people overlapped. Racing + Crypto just represents the pursuit of the forefront of technology + finance .
I personally didn’t know much about F1 before. I initially thought that some luxury car brands were more powerful. Later, I learned that the Red Bull Racing team’s drivers ranked first in F1. In addition, the Red Bull Racing team itself has a Web3 department, so communication and docking are very smooth and efficient. At the beginning of 25 years, we reached a contract for cooperation.
In terms of conversion rate measurement, Crypto trading platforms are not like physical goods such as clothes and beverages (it takes 7 exposures to generate customer trust). Instead, the logo appears on jerseys, racing cars, and stadiums, leaving an impression on sports enthusiasts and sports people. When they become interested in Crypto one day, they can learn more about it.
Odaily Planet Daily: The last question is, what do you think of the activeness of the bosses of various exchanges on social platforms such as X? Do you want to increase or decrease the frequency of speaking out this year? Do you want to promote personal IP in the team? What are the considerations behind this?
Han Lin: This depends more on the personality of the bosses of each exchange. Some are indeed more extroverted. I come from a technical background and am more introverted, but I have the responsibility to promote the company and let users know and trust Gate.io. I want to create a personal IP, and forcing myself to be outgoing may not work well. So, let it go.
