If you’ve been following our blockchain and cryptocurrency series, you know that there are several platforms where you can trade your cryptocurrency. Gemini is an exchange platform that offers three currencies to trade: US dollars, bitcoin, and ether.
Gemini’s founders, the Winklevoss twins, headquartered the exchange in New York.
Ease of Use
Gemini is different from Coinbase in many ways. Coinbase has a BitLicense issued by New York. And Gemini is a New York State limited liability Trust. Both companies are fully regulated and licensed within their own rights, but it may matter to you that Gemini’s founders purposefully applied for this type of business license because they wanted to work with both institutional clients (like big banks) and individuals.
The limited liability Trust charter regulated “trust banks” like Rockefeller Trust in the past. New York says the license allows for virtual currency exchanges, where people swap dollars and other fiat currencies for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The marketplace is open 24/7 to the following locations (so far): 45 U.S. states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and the U.K.
Quality
Gemini’s founders publicly intend to allow access to other crypto markets as and when they warrant it, so you may have a variety of options besides the aforementioned ones soon.
You can trade in three pairs: BTC/USD, ETH/USD and ETH/BTC. Gemini also allows users to place limit orders to buy or sell. The order won’t execute until another customer wants to trade it at the specified limit price or better. The limit order will stand until fulfilled or canceled.
Gemini also offers market orders, make-or-cancel (post-only), and immediate-or-cancel. The minimum amount of bitcoin you can buy is .00001 BTC, or 1000 satoshis (1 satoshi is equivalent to .00000001 BTC). For ether, minimum quantity is .001 ETH, but the smallest allowable quantity increment is 0.000001 ETH.
Currently, Gemini does not allow trading on margin.
Cost and Fees
Deposit and withdraw with your bank account (wire transfer). In this way, your account is pre-funded.
Everything is free in terms of deposits and withdrawals through the three methods: bitcoin, bank wire, bank transfer (ACH).
Trading fees are 0.25% of both sell side and buy side.
Trading Limits
Gemini trades on a dynamic maker and taker fee/rebate schedule. Traders receive up to a 0.15% rebate on liquidity-making trades. Gemini charges takers up to 0.15%. The amount depends on gross trading volume and the buy/sell ratio over the past 30 days. The data is reassessed every 24 hours.
Unless you use ACH transfer, there’s no limit on deposits and withdrawals. Using ACH transfer, deposit $500 maximum per day, $15,000 per month for individuals. For institutions, ACH deposit limits rest at $10,000 per day, or $300,000 per month.
Security
Gemini excels in security and compliance. Accounts using U.S. dollars are insured by the FDIC. The funds are held in a New York-chartered bank.
Gemini does its due diligence to remain completely compliant with all digital asset regulations and consumer protection laws.
Like Coinbase, Gemini stores its digital assets offline, in a system called cold storage. Online assets are hosted on Amazon Web Services, which generally has great security measures like tiered-access controls, multi-factor authentication, and dedicated hardware security modules.
Customer Support
Gemini’s FAQs are seriously lacking. The answers all lead to other pages on the site that someone searching for in-depth answers will already have looked through.
The help center is reportedly 24/7, but you can’t get in touch without submitting a request form through email. Through personal experience, the support team took more than 12 hours to reply via email.
The website has a blog with articles about how to buy and sell bitcoins using Gemini. There is no bitcoin calculator, but the homepage (and tab title) display a dynamic number of trades, most recent price of bitcoin, and 24-hour range of prices.
Sources: Gemini, CryptoCompare, TopTenReviews, Wired
