Gate Futures Trading: A Complete Guide from Beginner to Expert, Start Your Encryption Derivatives Trading Journey

The volatility of the crypto world contains opportunities, and Futures Trading is an advanced tool for accurately capturing these opportunities. The world-leading crypto assets trading platform Gate provides tens of millions of users with a set of Depth and User-friendliness coexisting Futures Trading system.

Whether you are a prudent investor seeking to hedge risks or an active trader aiming to amplify returns, you can find suitable solutions here.

01 Trading Basics: Core Concepts of Futures Trading

To understand Futures Trading, one must first grasp its operational framework. Gate's contract model is essentially a unified account trading system based on smart contracts.

In this model, users can seamlessly switch between spot, leverage, and various contract products, including Futures Trading, perpetual contracts, and options contracts, within the same account without the hassle of transferring funds between multiple accounts.

The core advantage of this design lies in unified fund management. All trading varieties share a margin pool, avoiding delays and costs of transferring funds between sub-accounts, greatly enhancing fund utilization efficiency. Traders can flexibly switch between strategies such as spot grids, leveraged trading, and Futures Trading based on market changes.

Futures Trading involves some key terms. Leverage allows users to control a larger nominal position with a smaller margin, Gate supports a maximum of 125x leverage, significantly amplifying both profits and risks.

Perpetual Contracts are contracts without an expiration date, which use a funding rate mechanism that settles every 8 hours to keep their prices closely anchored to the spot underlying prices.

02 Account Mode: Matching Trading Needs at Different Stages

Gate offers a variety of account models to cater to the different needs of beginners to professional institutions. Understanding these models is a prerequisite for effective risk management and capital allocation.

Classic Spot Model is the most basic, suitable for ordinary users who only engage in spot trading, with independent assets across various business lines.

For traders who are new to derivatives, the single coin margin model is an ideal starting point. In this model, only USDT assets can be used as margin for Futures Trading, with relatively isolated risk, and liquidation only affects USDT margin assets.

Once the total asset value reaches 500 USD, users can upgrade to the multi-currency margin mode. In this mode, various crypto assets in the account can be combined as shared margin for derivatives trading based on USD valuation, achieving cross-currency profit and loss offset and higher capital efficiency.

For professional traders and hedge funds with asset scales exceeding 10,000 USD, the portfolio margin model offers industry-leading risk control mechanisms. It can identify highly correlated asset combinations (such as BTC spot and BTC perpetual contracts) and take into account the risk hedging effects when calculating margin requirements, thereby maximizing capital efficiency.

03 Trading Variety: Dual-track Parallel Futures Trading System

Gate offers a rich and flexible variety of Futures Trading products, primarily divided into Perpetual Contracts and Delivery Contracts. Among them, Perpetual Contracts have become the most active trading products due to their characteristic of having no expiration date.

According to the margin type, perpetual contracts are divided into two major systems:

• U-based contracts: Use stablecoins such as USDT as margin and settlement currency. The contract price is quoted in USDT, and profits and losses are also settled in USDT. This method allows traders' risk exposure to be directly linked to the dollar price of Crypto Assets, avoiding the price Fluctuation of holding the underlying asset itself, which is favored by most traders.
• Coin-Margined Futures: Uses the underlying crypto assets themselves (such as BTC, ETH) as margin and settlement currency. The contract price is quoted in that coin, and profits and losses are settled in that coin as well. This is suitable for long-term holders who are optimistic about a certain crypto asset and wish to earn more of that coin.

Margin Mode is another key choice. Under Cross Margin, all available balance in the account is used as shared margin for positions, which is beneficial for resisting Fluctuation but has risk linkage.

Isolated Margin allocates independent margin for each position, ensuring that the profit and loss of positions do not affect each other, achieving precise risk isolation.

04 Practical Guide: Complete Your First Futures Trading

Futures trading on Gate is straightforward and intuitive. Whether on the web version or the App, you can follow these core steps to start your first attempt.

The first step is fund transfer. In the classic account mode, you need to click “fund transfer” to transfer assets from the spot account to the futures trading account. In the advanced mode of the unified account, eligible assets will automatically or as set become available margin.

The second step is to set the position parameters. Depending on your risk preference, choose between the “full position” or “isolated position” mode. Then, adjust the leverage ratio within the range of 1 to 125 times. High leverage reduces margin requirements but also significantly increases the risk of liquidation.

The third step is to place an order to open a position. Gate offers various order types such as limit orders, market orders, and conditional orders. After determining the market direction, click “Buy/Long” or “Sell/Short” to open a position. It is essential to set reasonable take profit and stop loss levels before or after opening a position; this is the first line of defense in risk management.

The final step is Monitoring and Closing Positions. You can view the position details and liquidation price in real-time on the “Positions” page. When the expected target is reached or if you need to stop loss, choose market close, limit close, or one-click close to end the trade.

05 Risk Management: Protecting Your Assets Amid Fluctuation

Futures Trading amplifies potential returns while proportionally increasing risks. Trading on Gate, establishing and adhering to strict risk management rules is key to long-term survival.

Leverage is a double-edged sword. Although Gate offers leverage of up to 125 times, it is crucial for beginners and ordinary traders to start with low leverage as the first step, which allows you to familiarize yourself with the characteristics of the market while maintaining sufficient risk buffer space.

Forced Liquidation is the most vigilant risk event in Futures Trading. When market Fluctuation causes the margin to fall below the maintenance margin requirement, the system will automatically enforce liquidation. By choosing the isolated margin mode, you can isolate the forced liquidation risk of a single position from other positions and the account principal.

Using tools wisely is a sign of intelligence. The conditional order (take profit and stop loss order) provided by Gate can help you automatically close positions at preset prices, avoiding missed opportunities due to emotions or not monitoring the market. The platform also offers a comprehensive Futures Trading introductory course, taught by professional traders, which is a valuable resource for systematically learning risk management knowledge.

06 Innovative Frontier: Gate Perp DEX - The Decentralized Future

In addition to its powerful centralized trading platform, Gate has also made strategic deployments in the decentralized finance sector. Its self-developed Gate Perp DEX is a decentralized perpetual contract exchange built on the Gate Layer second-layer network.

Gate Perp DEX represents higher transparency and asset self-custody. Users can trade simply by connecting their wallets, with assets hosted by audited smart contracts. All orders and asset changes are real-time on-chain, and can be verified.

In terms of experience, it is no less than centralized platforms. Gate Perp DEX supports up to 447 trading markets, covering mainstream and long-tail assets. With its built-in high-performance matching engine and order book model, it can provide low-latency trading and a more in-depth market.

The platform also supports full margin/isolated margin, up to 125x leverage and a variety of order types, providing a seamless bridge for users familiar with Gate centralized Futures Trading to transition into the DeFi world.

Future Outlook

On the Gate Perp DEX, user assets are locked by smart contracts, and each transaction record is written to the blockchain in real-time, allowing for public verification. Meanwhile, the risk indicators on the Gate main platform's Futures Trading interface are fluctuating in real-time, with the liquidation price marked by a prominent red line, reminding every trader.

Whether you are a DeFi player seeking transparency and security, or a professional trader in need of high-performance tools, you can find your position in the ecosystem of Gate.