Gemini

Gemini Review

What is Gemini?

Gemini is an American cryptocurrency exchange. The Winklewoss twins (otherwise more known as the twins that started Facebook together with Mark Zuckerberg) founded it in 2014.

New York Trust Company

The exchange is a New York trust company regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS). All USD deposits are held for the customers’ benefit at FDIC-insured banks. All digital assets are custodied in trust on the customer’s behalf. These are phenomenal aspects of this exchange and makes it different from most other top crypto exchanges.

As the exchange is American, US-investors can also trade here.

Mobile Support

Most people prefer to do their cryptocurrency trading via desktop. But there are also a lot of people doing it via their smart phones or reading tablets. If you are on of those people, you’ll be happy to know that the Gemini trading platform is also available as a mobile application.

Gemini Referral Program

Gemini also offers a competitive referral program for both referrer and referee. The more they trade, the more you both can earn: get up to 25% of their trading fees for a year! To give readers a clearer idea of how Gemini's referral program breaks down, we included a table with all tiers explained below. 

*Trading fee revenue share for both Referrers and Referees lasts for 12 months, starting the day the Referee signs up for a Gemini account.

Gemini Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen cryptocurrency and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the trading view at Gemini:

Gemini Fees

Gemini Trading fees

The fees charged by this exchange are a bit more complex than other exchanges, as they consist of two parts. One part is the "Convenience Fee". This is a percentage of the purchased/sold amount. The Convenience Fee is what is closest to the normal trading fee charges at most other exchanges. The global industry average trading fee is around 0.10%-0.15% today (previously a bit higher, up to 0.25% as average). Gemini charges 0.50%, so it's a fair bit higher than industry average.

Then, in addition to the 0.50% trading fee, you also have to pay a transaction fee, which is a fixed USD-amount for smaller purchases. The USD-amount ranges from USD 0.99 to USD 2.99 for purchases between 0 - USD 200. However, above that (for any purchases above USD 200), you need to pay 1.49% of the order value.

To conclude, for any orders above USD 200 in value, you pay 1.99%. This is a very high fee.

Gemini Withdrawal fees

Gemini charges 0.001 BTC when you withdraw BTC. This is an acceptable fee level, but it is still a bit higher than the global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee. The global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee is 0.000812 BTC. The difference between the global industry average fee and Gemini’s withdrawal fee might be insignificant to many people. However, from our perspective, the withdrawal fee is more of an indicator of where in the global fee landscape an exchange wishes to place itself.

Deposit Methods

This trading venue offers both wire transfer credit cards as deposit methods. You can also connect your debit card to Apple Pay or Google Pay to get started. Seeing as this platform accepts fiat currency deposits, it is a so called "entry-level exchange" through which new crypto investors can take their first steps into the exciting crypto world.