As everything dumps this weekend, I decided to buy a small amount of XCH, mainly to get my procedures down. Just reporting gate.io worked for me as a USA resident (Hawaii)
Created gate.io account. Login captcha uses WebGL, caused me problems and I had to switch computers.
Went through verification flow, three photos – front+back of ID, selfie holding ID and note with account number. Passed within 15 minutes (!)
Purchased USDT using standing fiat balance on Coinbase Pro; filled at $1.0014 and 0.5% fee
Sent ERC-20 USDT to gate.io deposit address, tx fee 0.00373 ETH.
Traded the USDT for XCH…spread was $4, I posted a limit order $1 below the ask and it filled quickly. 0.2% fee
Withdrew XCH to my node wallet address, tx fee just under 0.003 XCH.
Both crypto transfers confirmed within a few minutes as I was sitting there. Overall a fine experience, I was prepared mentally for a lot worse
Coinbase Pro was the convenient starting point for me since I had some dollars there; of course I wouldn’t mind finding a cheaper way to get USDT into gate.io…(they can accept various altchain flavors of it)
EDIT 12-June-2021: A few weeks after this was written, Coinbase Pro effectively eliminated* the 0.5% fee to purchase USDT with USD, significantly improving this approach. (*reduced to 0.01%)
I use gate.io to exchange my XCH for ETH then transfer to my primary exchange. I do recommend them. I’m a USA/NJ resident and the verification process took about 24 hours.
First purchase successful. But I will definitely do it differently next time. The way I did it was a little expensive (convenient, but expensive). Yesterday, I wired $1000 to my OTC account at gate.io. The wire fee (from my bank) was $30. This is one step I will do differently. Either figure out how to ACH to that OTC account or go through my gemini account and buy ETH/BTC and transfer that to gate.io. Either of these would bypass that $30 fee. So at this point I have $1000 sitting in the gate.io OTC account ready to buy crypto. But I can’t just buy XCH, I need to buy USDT or some other main crypto. So, I purchase USDT. Everywhere on the site says that it is a 2% (maximum) fee to buy but when asking for a quote, it says it will cost $1046 to buy 1000 USDT. Well that’s not 2% is it. After a worthless chat with support, I went ahead and made the purchase. 956 USDT for $1000. So now I have 956 USDT for my all in amount of $1030. I then place an order for 2.012 XCH at 475.23 USDT (to make the most out of my balance). Got filled about an hour later. Then transferred that XCH to my cold wallet. This went through in just a couple minutes.
So, a slightly expense way to buy XCH, but successful.
Thank you for the update. I just setup a coinbase account for my next transaction attempt. It is nice that they let you add Paypal as a funding source.
OK, but all it takes is going to the pro.coinbase.com to use the pro version .? Not sure what the qualifications are for pro. But apparently I met them. All I did was go to pro.coinbase.com and it works. Odd. But in fact, when entering an order there for USDT there is no fee shown. I’ll attempt this later in the week and report back.
Just want to update this with my recent experience, being in the US and using gate.io.
They must have changed how they do things since May, because now it takes at least 24 hours AFTER KYC(2nd) verification before you can withdrawal anything, even if it says you have a limit of 5000E or whatever the case may be. In the US you need KYC to do pretty much anything (and even then, there is only spot market allowed).
You can transfer in, exchange, whatever, but you cannot withdrawal until 24 hours after the SECOND KYC verification is complete (the live camera, make you blink one). That is when the count down begins.
Depending on how quickly the first KYC gets approved, it could be a couple days before you can withdrawal anything.
*Please note, I do not know how the internal gate.io transfers/ wallets/ whatever work or whether this delay applies to them as well, or not.
But in case you haven’t done it yet. Once all of your KYC verifications are done, transferring in and out of gate.io is effortless. I have done it many times with no issues.
