Launched back in the year 2015, Gemini is a private, licensed digital asset exchange that also offers custodial services for digital holdings. It is a US-based company founded by the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. However, they are not just limited to the US as they are readily expanding their services in both Europe and
Launched back in the year 2015, Gemini is a private, licensed digital asset exchange that also offers custodial services for digital holdings. It is a US-based company founded by the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. However, they are not just limited to the US as they are readily expanding their services in both Europe and Asia.
The main focus of the Winklevoss twins was to build an ecosystem to attract institutional investors and day traders to the cryptocurrency.
These transactions will take place in the form of Zcash through Litecoin or even Bitcoin Cash are accepted. They even offer Bitcoin and Ether Trading which started last year on May 19th.
Zcash is a privacy coin that considers itself to be the “the first open, permissionless cryptocurrency that can fully protect the privacy of transactions using zero-knowledge cryptography.”
There are other well-known cryptocurrency exchange platforms like Kraten and Coinbase and Gemini competes with them. Gemini would grab attention because it gives the users the ability to buy, sell and even store primary cryptocurrencies. The users can even enjoy the liberty to exchange these cryptocurrencies against each other or for fiat currencies.
We all are quite familiar with the word Gemini. The word has Latin origin and it means or represents duality. So the idea of Gemini platform is that they are readily marrying both forms of money which include the digital-age cryptocurrency as well as the traditional fiat currency which will both be used interchangeably in the coming future.
After their successful launch in 2015, they started operations in Canada in June 2016. They enabled ETH/BTC trading for the customers there. Only two years after that they were welcomed to the U.K. They even managed to get European customers.
September 2016 marked the launch of Gemini’s first daily bitcoin auction, a popular custom followed primarily in modern stock exchanges but this being one for cryptocurrency exchange, it stood out. In July 2017, daily ether auctions were launched.
Their dream of expanding across borders was being fulfilled as by the October and November of 2016, Gemini had seen an expansion of its platform operations in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and even Japan.
They signed a partnership with CBOE which launched the first-ever cash-settled bitcoin futures contract in December 2017. The costs of these contracts had its base in Gemini’s auction price for bitcoin, denominated in U.S. dollars.
Any marketplace or security exchange is not devoid of issues. These challenges were also a part of the progress that Gemini had made over the years. Major developments in cryptocurrencies like hard forks and high price volatility were causing some of these challenges while the others revolved around Gemini’s infrastructure.
Following the Ethereum hard fork in July 2016, the exchange ran into issues and had to temporarily disable all ether deposits and withdrawals.
Even though there were preventive measures taken for the future, the complications seemed to come back during the bitcoin hard fork of bitcoin cash in August 2017.
There was also time back in November 2017 when the users lost access to Gemini’s web and API interfaces for quite a few hours due to an unusual increase in traffic amid surging bitcoin prices. But they managed to break all the barriers than obstructed their success path.
As of today if we talk about the current scenario they had a successful settlement of the first-ever Bitcoin Futures at $10,900.00 as determined by Gemini’s 4 p.m. Eastern Time BTC/USD auction, Gemini continues to mark its territory with better services in the cryptocurrency transaction marketplace.
The competition amongst the leading companies is tough but if Gemini keeps expanding throughout the world with better product offerings, they will be huge even though the established players like Kraten and Coinbase are on the field.
“Cryptocurrency is the future of money and we’re committed to building a bridge to that future,” Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder, and CEO at Gemini said in a company release. “From day one we have focused on building an institutional-grade platform and we are continually investing in talent that will help us realize this.”
