Interview with Kevin Lee, Chief Commercial Officer of Gate Group: Crypto financial instruments will expand to multiple levels, and the key to increasing market share is marketing

Author: Weilin, PANews

The cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io recently released its third quarter report for 2024, showing that its trading volume reached nearly $720 billion and its users exceeded 17 million. Not long ago, Gate.io also announced its cooperation with the Italian Serie A football club Inter Milan to become the official jersey sleeve sponsor. From the market to the stadium, Gate.io has grabbed an important place in the hearts of global users.

Kevin Lee, the Chief Business Officer of Gate Group, single-handedly facilitated the cooperation with Inter Milan. The new CBO previously had more than 15 years of rich experience in stock and swap program trading, institutional customer service, artificial intelligence financial product development, transaction supervision and information technology risk management in the Asia-Pacific region. Recently, PANews conducted an exclusive interview with Kevin during his participation in the Dubai Line industry event, sharing how Gate Group's sponsorship of Inter Milan promoted its business growth, Gate Group's plan to strategically invest $10 million in the TON blockchain, and popular trends in the crypto industry such as ETFs, memes, and AI. Kevin said that the current financial instruments in the crypto market are less than 5% of traditional finance, and they can be expanded across fields and at multiple levels in the future. In addition, he believes that Meme and memecoin have deep cultural significance, and Gate.io aims to provide fair access.

Hong Kong financial veteran turns to Web3

Kevin has been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2013. He first bought Bitcoin in 2013. At that time, the historical high price of Bitcoin was $140. A few weeks after the purchase, Bitcoin fell to $90. It was not until 2017 when Bitcoin broke through $20,000 that he recovered his Bitcoin. Now Bitcoin has exceeded $70,000, which is undoubtedly a very successful investment.

Kevin then focused on learning blockchain technology, not only Bitcoin, but also smart contracts. He also did a lot of similar arbitrage trading, but only on his personal account, just to better understand the market. Later, he worked with the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong to promote the development of institutional licensing applications and regulatory frameworks.

In 2023, Kevin joined Gate Group as CEO of Gate.HK and was appointed Chief Business Officer of Gate Group in 2024. During his tenure as CEO of Gate.HK, he has been working on the application for licenses and believes that the compliant environment has arrived and Hong Kong will become the center of cryptocurrency in Asia and even the world.

Although Gate.HK voluntarily withdrew its application for a Hong Kong virtual asset trading platform (VASP) license in May this year, Kevin emphasized that this was more out of a pure adjustment of business priorities. He believes that Hong Kong needs a regulatory framework, and this is the right approach. "We always maintain close communication with the government and various regulatory agencies. Gate.HK is also actively arranging to reaffirm the VASP license. At present, our focus in Hong Kong is on developing OTC (over-the-counter) business. Recent policy speeches also mentioned that a regulatory framework for OTC transactions of cryptocurrencies and virtual assets will be introduced, so this is our current focus. In the short term, OTC business has greater development potential in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region, which is also very important for our continued operations."

Gate.io's market share increased by 1.3% in Q3, and marketing strategy is the key

According to Tokeninsight data, in Q3 2024, Gate.io's market share increased by 1.3%, and GT performed particularly well, rising by 16.5% by the end of the third quarter, outperforming Bitcoin and other exchange tokens. Kevin believes that a large part of Gate.io's market share growth benefited from the popularity of Bitcoin. But more importantly, there have been major changes in marketing strategies over the past 12 months.

Kevin said that one of Gate.io's significant advantages is its long history of stable operations. We are one of the earliest exchanges established and still active in the market, which means that we have gone through at least three distinct market cycles and experienced several bull and bear markets, which also proves our resilience and ability to maintain stability and growth in cycles and fluctuations.

“In the DeFi field, although our presence is not strong enough, we are growing. We have a very solid and strong community foundation, and Gate.io is steadily expanding to other markets, with the hope of entering Europe and America in the future. Brand building will be our focus in the future, and we hope to shape a more unified brand image by listening to the voice of the community,” said Kevin.

Gate.io is also very active in large-scale ecological cooperation. On October 8, Gate.io announced a strategic investment of $10 million in the TON blockchain, aiming to accelerate the development of projects based on the Telegram platform. Kevin said that the TON ecosystem has great potential. Gate.io also supported the TON community's hackathon and provided a $2 million bonus pool to support projects in GameFi, DeFi, SocialFi, on-chain analysis and interoperability. These initiatives will help attract more developers and bridge the gap between the huge user base and development progress.

Next, he said Gate.io will focus on opportunities and explore cooperation with different ecosystems. Its overall investment goal is ecosystem-neutral, and the top priority is whether it sees potential in a field or a specific project.

The biggest marketing event for Gate.io this year was in August when it announced a partnership with Inter Milan Football Club to become its official jersey sleeve sponsor. Kevin said that the immediate goal is to bring Gate's community closer to football, especially Inter Milan.

Since the establishment of the partnership between Gate Group and Inter Milan, the two sides have organized many friendly football matches in the past few months. "We have given away many Inter Milan jerseys, arranged special autographs and photo sessions with legendary players, and even provided VIP tickets to take fans to the San Siro Stadium to experience a football feast. Inter Milan's glorious history coincides with our values. Resilience, passion, commitment to excellence - this is not only the essence of Inter Milan, but also the spirit of Gate.io, and we want to feel this resonance with the community."

Kevin pointed out that blockchain technology has great potential in the field of sports, and existing models and experiments cover NFT, fan tokens and metaverse. Gate Group hopes to promote the application of cryptocurrency and blockchain in a natural and gradual way, rather than forcing football fans or ordinary audiences to accept these new technologies. "People will only really get involved when blockchain or cryptocurrency can make it cheaper, more efficient or more interesting to enhance the experience. This is the key."

Viewpoint: Crypto financial instruments account for less than 5% of traditional finance, and Meme has deep cultural significance

Kevin has extensive experience in traditional finance and believes that the crypto market is trying to introduce many financial instruments from traditional financial markets. However, the current size of the crypto market may be less than 5% of traditional finance. For example, although Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have been launched, there are many types of ETFs in traditional finance, including stock basket ETFs, index ETFs, inverse leveraged ETFs, and ETFs in different industries. At present, the crypto market fluctuates almost synchronously as a whole, and the performance differences between different fields are not obvious. As the market matures, sectors like GameFi may show a completely different trend from the Layer 1 field.

Kevin said that we may see more types of ETFs and diversified investment strategies around these products in the future. In addition to ETFs, the crypto market is also gradually exploring complex financial products such as credit default swaps and contract structured products, but these are still in the early stages. This is a general expectation of the development of financial instruments and investment tools in the crypto industry.

At the same time, Kevin also mentioned another hot phenomenon in the crypto market - meme coins. He believes that meme culture is often misunderstood, and people usually regard memes as funny pictures, but in fact memes have a deeper cultural influence, which has gone beyond the superficial entertainment. The cultural influence of memes can be traced back to many fields such as music, movies and books. We often quote classic movie lines or famous quotes from books, which can also be counted as part of memes. Therefore, memes, as a powerful tool in modern culture, have a wide range of influence. However, Kevin also pointed out that people in the industry sometimes over-link everything to memes. In fact, memes need to have a specific context and must be generated naturally, not forcibly created. Only when the community or audience can quickly understand and resonate with it will it become a real meme.

As an important platform in the crypto industry, Gate.io has always been committed to providing users with fair and convenient access to various projects and currencies, whether they are meme coins or not. Kevin emphasized that although the platform cannot predict the future performance or market position of a meme coin, Gate.io will conduct due diligence during the listing process to ensure the compliance of the project. At the same time, he suggested that investors do their own research and choose projects that they think are promising. In fact, some meme coins have gradually transformed into projects with practical uses, and Kevin is optimistic about this trend.

Looking ahead, Kevin also mentioned a potential challenge: AI-related fraud projects and "rug pull" scams. He reminded investors that with the advancement of AI technology, some projects may use AI to generate false information, forge the identity of founders, and even mislead investors through social media interactions created by AI. Therefore, Kevin called on the community to remain vigilant, especially to be more cautious when doing project research to avoid being deceived.