The crypto exchange has recently raised $64 million in trading fees by selling the native tokens for its upcoming Blockchain , according to Coindesk.
The sale went on for seven days, and the digital currency can only be used once Gate.io launches its proprietary blockchain.
The Malta-registered digital asset exchange first announced about the sale on April 1, in which it specified that it was going to list 300 million Gatechain Tokens for sale. The exchange also outlined that it aims to launch the Mainnet of the exchange's proprietary blockchain - Gatechain - in Q4 2019.
“[Gatechain Token] is the base currency of Gatechain's public chain, supporting the infrastructure of the Gatechain public chain,” the exchange noted. “GT is the main network fuel of Gatechain, paying the network transfer fee. Gatechain encourages GT holders to protect the network health through PoS equity mining. Gate.io will also adopt GT as part of its eco.”
On April 14, the exchange revealed that there was a massive demand for its token as the sale was oversubscribed with orders more than $2.9 billion.
In the first phase of the token sale, the exchange has distributed 150 million Gatechain Tokens, raising $64 million as pre-paid trading fees, Marie Tatibouet, chief marketing officer of the exchange, told Coindesk.
High demand for platform tokens
The demand for crypto exchange's native tokens increased drastically over the past few months given the increasing number of initial exchange offering (IEO). Initiated by Binance, other major crypto exchanges including Huobi and Bittrex also opened their own IEO platforms.
Gate.io is also set to jump into the IEO bandwagon as Tatibouet revealed that the exchange would launch a platform similar to Binance Launchpad later this week.
“The demand is indeed correlated with the overall market condition when exchange tokens have jumped by 150 percent in Q1. Thus retail investors’ anticipation for these tokens to yield a high rate of return is still positive,” Tatibouet said.
