Gate

Gate carries the broadest perpetual catalog of the three venues and needs only two credentials. If you already hold funds there, it is the path of least resistance.

Before you begin

Minimum account: $2,500 of equity in your USDT futures account.

The strategy holds roughly twenty positions. Gate’s order minimums are small on most markets and comparable to Bitget’s at the upper end, so it shares the $2,500 floor. Below that, some legs cannot be placed and you run a more concentrated book than the model wanted.

AlphaHouse trades your USDT-settled perpetual futures only. Spot balances are not visible to it, so move what you intend to trade into futures first.

Step 1: Create the API key

1. Log in at gate.com and open API Management.

2. Create a new API key (v4).

3. Set permissions. You need:

   • Futures / Perpetual Contract: read and trade
   • Unified Account: read, if your account is unified (portfolio margin)
   • Withdraw: no
   • Wallet / Transfer: not required

4. If Gate asks for an IP whitelist, leave it unrestricted or contact support for the current outbound addresses. An incorrect one appears as a connection failure.

5. Save the key and copy the API Key and Secret. The secret is shown once.

Never enable withdrawal permission

AlphaHouse never needs it. Trade permission lets the system open and close positions and nothing else. Withdrawal permission would let a key move money off the exchange, which no trading system needs.

Step 2: Paste the credentials into AlphaHouse

Two fields.

Field in AlphaHouse	What to paste
API Key	The API key string from Gate
API Secret	The secret shown once at creation

1. Go to Exchanges and choose Add Brokerage Connection. In onboarding this is the “Connect Your Brokerage” step.

2. Select Gate from the exchange list.

3. Fill in API Key and API Secret.

4. Click Test Connection.

5. Once it succeeds, click Add Connection (or Continue in onboarding).

Step 3: Verify it worked

A successful test reports your account equity, and the connection card shows a green Connected badge with equity and open position count. Compare it against your Gate futures or unified account; a much smaller figure usually means the funds are still in spot.

Unified versus classic accounts

Gate offers a unified account (portfolio margin) and a classic futures account. Both work: AlphaHouse tries unified first and falls back to classic USDT futures. What matters is that your API key can read whichever your funds are in. If your account is unified and the key lacks the unified permission, the balance read fails and the test fails with it.

Things worth knowing

Cross margin. Gate’s default, and what the strategy assumes.

Perpetuals only. USDT-quoted perpetual contracts. Dated futures (an expiry date in the symbol) and USD-settled markets are excluded.

Contract sizing. Gate expresses order size in contracts rather than the base asset, each market with its own contract size. AlphaHouse handles the conversion, but it is why a Gate order may not be placeable at exactly the notional you expect. See held orders.

If something goes wrong

• Test fails immediately. Recheck both fields, then check the key has futures permissions rather than spot-only.
• Equity reads zero or very low. Funds are probably still in spot, or the key cannot read the account type they are in.
• A specific symbol never trades. Some Gate contract sizes make small legs unplaceable. Expected, not a fault.

More cases in Troubleshooting.