Gemini Review

Introduction to Gemini

Founded by the celebrity Winklevoss twins and incorporated in the United States, Gemini is a newer cryptocurrency exchange dedicated to providing an ultra-secure, highly professional, and well-regulated trading platform.

It is mainly geared toward those who plan on trading large amounts of BTC and value peace of mind when it comes to knowing their stored funds are well taken care of. Due to their striving to remain compliant with U.S. regulations, Gemini doesn’t offer some fancier trading options seen by non-U.S. based exchanges, such as margin trading, leverage, derivatives, etc. It does, however, guarantee insured crypto funds for users.

Why Use Gemini?

Although it is not as fancy and loaded with features as other major exchanges, Gemini is extremely honest and trustworthy. Moreover, its design is straightforward and uncluttered by frills, friendly to novice traders who are perhaps learning how to trade cryptocurrency for the first time.

For as simple as it is, it also has a trading screen mode for more advanced traders looking to place more sophisticated order types. Though geared primarily to a U.S. audience, Gemini is available in 60+ countries and often does over $200 million in daily trading volume.

Visit the Gemini Exchange

How to Register an Account at Gemini

After pressing “Get Started,” you will be asked to enter your full name along with an email address and password. Next, you will be asked to provide a phone number to help secure your account and confirm the number by entering a code sent via text. You will then need to provide your social security number (or national ID) and date of birth, awaiting identity confirmation. This should only take a few seconds.

Additionally, you will need to confirm your email address by opening an email with a link confirmation. You will also need to perform additional identity verification to make a withdrawal or deposit over $500.

Do this by pressing the “Account” menu option in the upper-right part of the screen and then “Settings.” Next, you will see a button that says, “Verify my Identity.” Click that to begin the process, which involves uploading a picture of a passport or other national photo ID and providing your home address. The verification process is nearly instantaneous.

How to Deposit Gemini

Immediately after your identity has been verified, you’ll be brought to a screen with a popup asking if you’d like to add a funding source. This option will also be available in the left column under “My Portfolio.” Click it to get started adding a bank account or debit card. Link a bank account automatically by searching through a banking options list or manually adding your bank account.

The fastest way to make a deposit is by attaching a debit card. To do this, use the “Add debit card” option, select your fiat currency of deposit (USD, AUD, CAD, GBP, HKD), provide a billing address and debit card information. After confirmation (which is usually instant), you can begin making deposits via debit card, which are also processed quickly.

The one downside to debit deposits is that Gemini adds a fee of 2.99% to 3.49% to the total purchase amount, whereas wire transfers do not incur fees. On the other hand, cryptocurrency deposits incur no fees and can be performed by pressing the “Transfer” menu button toward the top of the screen and selecting the coin you wish to deposit.

How to Trade on Gemini

Trading on Gemini is extremely straightforward. After pressing the “Market” menu tab, find the coin you wish to trade and click on it. This will bring up the basic trading screen where buy and sell market orders are made. Buy order amounts are denominated in fiat (USD, CAD, etc.), and Sell order amounts are denominated in some coins. Just enter in the dollar amount you wish to purchase, select how often you wish to make the purchase (“Once” by default), and press “Review Order.” After confirming you are happy with the rate and fees you are paying, press the “Place Order” button to complete the transaction.

For more advanced trading options, press the “Looking for other order types?” button underneath the “Review Order” button to activate Gemini ActiveTrader. This will bring up the more classic type of order screen, complete with candlestick chart, multiple order types (Limit, Stop-Limit, etc.), and multiple types of trading pairs not shown in the basic version.

Gemini Trading Fees

Fees range quite a bit on Gemini. Fees for the ActiveTrader trading screen start at 0.25% for Maker (limit) orders and 0.35% Taker (market) orders. Fees are lowered in a tier system, with the first tier starting at >$500,000 worth of trader per month.

Marketplace fees depend on the funding type used to make Buy or Sell orders and range from 0% (when promotions are available) to 3.49% if purchasing straight from a debit card.

Take Me to Gemini

Overview of supported coins

Although Gemini is primarily a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange with 75% of their daily trading volume found in their BTC/USD pair, they do support some altcoins, the most popular of which are:

• Ethereum (ETH)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Chainlink (LINK)
• Uniswap (UNI)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• finance (YFI)
• Zcash (ZEC)
• Dai (DAI)
• Ren (REN)
• Amp (AMP)
• 0x (ZRX)
• PAX Gold (PAXG)
• Balancer (BAL)

While the most popular coin pair backing is USD, pairs are also backed with BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, and DAI. These can be accessed from the ActiveTrader trading screen and are not found in the Marketplace trading screen.

Wrapping it up

In all, few exchanges are better regulated, more professional, honest, or trustworthy than Gemini. A product of a new era of crypto exchanges that makes it easy for anybody to buy or sell coins and tokens quickly, Gemini is backed by powerful investors, meaning you can rest assured your coins will be in good hands. Although fees are a bit high compared to other exchanges, it’s a small price to pay for Gemini’s ease of use and peace of mind offered to its customers.