Over the past week, institutionalization within the crypto market has deepened further. As ETF inflows continue, risk appetite rebounds, and institutional allocation sentiment improves, BTC broke through $82,000, driven by improved liquidity. Data shows that BTC ETFs saw net inflows of approximately $632 million over the week, while ETH ETF flows turned positive again. Leading ETF products such as IBIT and ETHA continue to attract institutional capital, with preferences increasingly concentrated on high-liquidity and low-fee offerings.
Meanwhile, on-chain funds are returning, and the market is gradually shifting from short-term trading logic to longer-term institutional allocation and infrastructure development. Notably, although the BTC price briefly dipped near the $82,000 mark, ETF holdings only decreased from about 1.38 million to 1.36 million BTC—a reduction of roughly 1.45%. Against the backdrop of overall market volatility, analysts view this change as relatively mild, indicating that most institutional investors have not significantly adjusted their positions in response to short-term price corrections. The logic of BTC as an asset allocation tool, rather than a short-term speculative instrument, is increasingly being embraced by long-term capital.
Business Data: Gate Institutional Metrics Continue to Grow
Against this backdrop, Gate has delivered impressive results across multiple institutional business indicators. According to PANews, in the first two weeks of May, Gate’s institutional spot trading volume rose 14.54% week-over-week, while contract trading volume increased by 18.10%. This growth rate significantly outpaces the market average, reflecting Gate’s ongoing competitiveness in institutional trading.
CrossEx, one of Gate’s core products for institutional clients, stood out with record highs in both trading volume and asset scale for three consecutive weeks. The CrossEx platform enables users to seamlessly access major crypto exchanges via a single account, leveraging a low-latency matching engine and standardized clearing and settlement architecture to ensure stable execution for high-frequency and large-volume trades. According to previously disclosed Q1 data, Gate’s institutional contract trading volume rose over 50% compared to the end of last year, the total number of institutional users increased by more than 66%, asset management scale grew by 22%, and CrossEx trading volume and net asset scale achieved approximately 9.4x and 3.1x growth, respectively. From a quarterly perspective, Gate is establishing a synergistic structure across spot, contract, and cross-exchange trading in its institutional business.
TradFi Product Matrix: Comprehensive Coverage from Crypto to Traditional Finance
As institutional capital seeks broader asset allocation and macro trading capabilities, Gate continues to deepen its TradFi strategy. Currently, Gate’s TradFi spot segment supports stock and metals trading, while its contract segment covers gold, silver, forex, indices, and commodities. The platform now offers 75 spot stock products and 55 stock contract products. From Apple and Tesla to NVIDIA, these global blue-chip stocks are integrated into Gate’s 24/7 trading system, allowing users to trade directly with USDT without switching between brokers and exchanges.
In precious metals and commodities, Gate has launched perpetual contracts for gold (XAU), silver (XAG), crude oil, and expanded to platinum, palladium, copper, aluminum, nickel, and lead, establishing a complete trading ecosystem for both precious and industrial metals. For forex and indices, the platform supports major currency pairs such as EUR and GBP, as well as global index perpetual contracts like Nasdaq 100 (NAS100), S&P 500 (SPX500), Dow Jones Industrial Average (US30), and Hang Seng Index (HK50).
Technology Iteration: API Access and CFD Contract System Upgrade
In May 2026, Gate executed a comprehensive upgrade to its TradFi trading system. All previous contract-for-difference products were unified under the "CFD contract" designation, and the TradFi segment now officially encompasses CFD contracts, perpetual contracts, and spot tokens, forming an integrated gateway for spot, derivatives, and price trading tools. CFD contracts are essentially products settled based on price movements, allowing users to trade without purchasing or holding the underlying asset. This provides institutional clients with more flexible risk management and tools for executing both long and short strategies.
Additionally, Gate Private Wealth Management officially launched the TradFi trading API in February 2026, delivering a systematic upgrade for multi-asset management at the technical architecture level. The API covers five core categories: precious metals, major currency pairs, global stock indices, commodities, and stock CFDs. Both crypto and TradFi assets can be managed within a unified account system, enabling permission control and fund allocation. Quantitative funds and advanced traders can now access the API to automate trading of traditional financial assets like precious metals, indices, and commodities, significantly improving the efficiency of cross-market strategy execution.
Summary
As of May 15, 2026, Gate’s institutional business achieved week-over-week growth of 14.54% in spot trading volume and 18.10% in contract trading volume during the first two weeks of May, with CrossEx setting new highs in trading volume and asset scale for three consecutive weeks. The Gate TradFi product matrix now covers spot (stocks, metals) and contracts (gold, silver, forex, indices, commodities), with a fully upgraded CFD contract system and TradFi API officially available to institutions. Gate is leveraging crypto asset allocation demand as a starting point to build a core hub connecting the crypto world and traditional financial markets, providing global institutional clients with truly multi-asset, cross-market trading infrastructure.
