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First, do no harm. Lessons from the FTX collapse and the path forward for moolahgeeks.
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Update (10 Nov 2022): Following the failure of FTX, we are withdrawing all our recommendations in the crypto space. Readers should not rely on anything in the post below. We are leaving the posts up for accountability but striking out all text to avoid any misunderstanding.
Gemini allows you to deposit SG$ via FAST and has one of the lowest withdrawal fees. It has never been hacked despite being one of the older exchanges, it has been granted an exempt status by the MAS & its subsidiary has a New York Trust license. It has a well known management team.
However, Gemini lists the fewest cryptocurrencies of all the exchanges we tested, only 4 of the top 10, and has relatively high, but still reasonable trading fees if you use its ActiveTrader platform.
If you value convenience and safety above all, and are comfortable trading only a few cryptocurrencies, Gemini is our pick for you.
Gemini Trust Company LLC is a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in New York City. It offers access to more than 75 cryptocurrencies on its platform, including Bitcoin and Ether. Gemini customers trade nearly US$190mm a day on the platform.
Gemini is the only large exchange we reviewed that lets you register using SingPass and deposit money using FAST in Singapore.
It currently has an exempt status from the MAS for DPT services meaning they are allowed to operate as an crypto exchange while waiting for approval of their license application. Gemini also has a trust company license from New York State.
Gemini was started by the Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss in 2015 and was valued at US$7bn in Nov 2021 by investors like Morgan Creek and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Exempt status from MAS Gemini is the only large crypto exchange that MAS has exempted from holding a license under the Payment Services act. The exemption will end once MAS decides on their license application.
Gemini also has a trust company license from the New York state, which comes with regulations on capital requirements and consumer protection. While this license does not hold in Singapore, it provides some comfort around the legitimacy and security of the business.
SingPass & FAST Integration Gemini is the only large crypto exchange that lets you open an account using SingPass for KYC and lets you fund the account with Singapore dollar using FAST. This makes Gemini a lot more convenient to join and use than any other exchange.
Low Withdrawal Fees Gemini also offers among the lowest cryptocurrency withdrawal fees of the exchanges we looked at. They also do not charge for wire transfers and other deposits. The only exception to low transfer fee was the 3.49% fees on deposits using debit cards.
Security Gemini has never been hacked in its 6+ years of operations. They store bulk of the cryptocurrency in a cold wallet with multisig authentication scheme and carry insurance for the portion in hot wallet. They require 2 factor authentication (2FA) by default and also permit withdrawals only to whitelisted addresses from 1 Mar 2022.
Gemini also operates an institutional cryptocurrency custody business that is regulated and audited. While this license does not hold in Singapore, it shows that their custody practices are likely to be robust.
Few Coins Gemini lists only 75 coins on their platform, the least of any major exchange. This compares to many 100s on most of their larger competitors. They only list 4 of top 10 and 32 of top 100 coins.
Low Volume The average daily trading volume on Gemini is around US$190mm. That compares to more than $1-2bn on other large exchanges we looked at. While this should be sufficient for most people trading Bitcoin or Ethereum, its likely that the liquidity of some of the smaller coins could be low, which could be a problem when trading.
No Futures Unlike most large exchanges, Gemini does not list futures on its platform. Since futures often tend to have much higher liquidity, this may be a deal breaker for more active traders.
Gemini is currently exempted by the MAS from holding a license for cryptocurrency exchange services (DPT services) in Singapore. The exemption will end once the MAS decides on their license application.
Gemini also has a trust company license from the New York state, which come with regulation on capital requirements and consumer protection. This license makes them a fiduciary and qualified custodian under New York Banking law and their custodian business is regularly audited.
Gemini uses this license to run Gemini Custody, their institutional cryptocurrency custody business. This license doesn’t have any force in Singapore and doesn’t apply to the exchange itself. It does give us some comfort that Gemini is willing and able to run a regulated and audited business and that their custody practices are likely to be reasonable.
Gemini Custody also carries a US$200mm cold storage insurance. Again, this is not for the exchange.
Gemini has never been hacked despite being one of the older exchanges, having launched in Oct 2015. They provide a fair amount of disclosure regarding their security policies on their Security page.
They have a dedicated cryptocurrency custody business that is focused on institutional clients and is regulated and regularly audited. While this is different from the exchange we use, it does provide some comfort about their security practices.
The platform itself does follow good security practices for user accounts. 2 factor authentication (2FA) is enabled by default and withdrawals are only permitted to whitelisted addresses, which should reduce the risk to the funds in your hot wallets.
They also insure the funds in the hot wallet against fraud, employee theft and security breach.
Trading Fees Gemini charges different fees for their basic and advanced trading platforms. Similar to many other crypto exchanges, the basic platform is confusingly much more expensive to use than the advanced platform.
We recommend everyone switch to the advanced platform by going into the settings menu on the web platform and choosing ActiveTrader. Simply go into the menu for Account > Settings and choose ActiveTrader in Trading Interface.
Order Size (US$) | Mobile App | Web Basic | Web ActiveTrader |
---|---|---|---|
≤ $10.00 | $0.99 | $0.99 | 0.25%-0.35% |
> $10.00 but ≤ $25.00 | $1.49 | $1.49 | |
> $25.00 but ≤ $50.00 | $1.99 | $1.99 | |
> $50.00 but ≤ $200.00 | $2.99 | $2.99 | |
> $200.00 | 1.49% | 1.49% | |
Orders on Mobile App and Basic interface also incur a further 0.50% convenience fee. |
Comparing Fees for different interfaces on Gemini (US$)
Sadly this option is not available in the mobile App and the only way to get lower rates on mobile is to use the website in the browser.
You pay a fee of 1.49% or more if you choose the basic Gemini interface on web & mobile, but only 0.25%-0.35% if you choose the advanced ActiveTrader interface. That is a difference of nearly 5x.
But that is not all! Gemini also charges a 0.50% spread (called Convenience fee) on the price of cryptocurrency for orders submitted using the basic interface. So the effective fee paid could be 1.99% or higher.
On orders less than S$250, the basic Gemini interface charges a flat dollar fee instead of a percentage of order value. This means the fee levels are a lot higher for smaller orders.
For an order of $15 or less you could pay 10% or more in fees. That is a very high fee to be paying. Cryptocurrencies have done very well over the last few years but it is very difficult to make money when you are paying that much in trading fees.
The fact that Gemini has 4 different fee slabs on the basic platform for orders between S$0-250 suggests that a lot of their clients are using the basic platform for these orders. This is a bad idea.
No matter what your order size, you should always be using the ActiveTrader interface on Gemini. It is a little more busy and mildly more complicated to use but still quite easy. It may take at most 2-3 min to understand and is worth the effort.
Transfer Fees Gemini offers among the lowest cryptocurrency withdrawal fees of the exchanges we looked at. This is important if you prefer to store the crypto assets in your own wallets rather than leaving them in the exchange wallet. They charge a fee of 0.0001 BTC for Bitcoin withdrawals and simply pass on the prevailing gas fee for ETH and ERC20 token withdrawals.
All fiat and cryptocurrency deposits are free.
Like most other crypto exchanges, the Gemini trading platform is focused on trading and does not offer many other tools and data.
You can check prices of various coins and instruments, look at customizable charts, examine your positions, historical and open trades.
Overall the Gemini platform, even the ActiveTrader interface, is very easy to use. However, it is a lot more basic than the other exchanges we reviewed. It presents less data and offers fewer customization options.
Spot Coverage & Liquidity Gemini lists 98 coins and 124 pairs on their exchange. This was the lowest of all the major exchanges we looked at. The average daily trading volume on Gemini was around US$190mm, again the lowest of all the major exchanges.
Exchange | Coin Gecko Trust Score | Coin Market Cap Score | Spot Volume (US$ million)* | Futures Volume (US$ million)* | Total Volume (US$ million) | # of Coins Listed | # of Pairs Listed |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Coinbase | 10 | 8.6 | 4,192 | 4,192 | 165 | 458 | |
Crypto.com | 10 | 7.1 | 3,390 | 1,152 | 4,542 | 174 | 280 |
KuCoin | 10 | 7.9 | 2,714 | 3,352 | 6,066 | 598 | 1138 |
FTX | 10 | 8.3 | 2,379 | 11,751 | 14,130 | 330 | 503 |
Gate.io | 10 | 7.4 | 1,520 | 3,139 | 4,659 | 1278 | 2461 |
Kraken | 10 | 8.1 | 1,145 | 300 | 1,345 | 110 | 440 |
Bitfinex | 10 | 7.3 | 979 | 458 | 1,437 | 170 | 432 |
Gemini | 10 | 7.1 | 191 | 191 | 75 | 96 | |
* Avg. of daily volume for the last 90 days, on 25th Feb |
Funding Gemini offers the best options for funding the account for users in Singapore. It is possible to fund your Gemini account with SG$ using FAST transfers. Gemini works with Xfers to enable this. Xfers holds a Major Payment Institution license under the Payment Services Act in Singapore.
Gemini also supports free wire transfers in other currencies such as USD, EUR, GBP, HKD etc. although you may need to pay fees to your Bank. We found that many Banks in Singapore offer free wire transfers in USD (if you already hold USD or convert your SGD to USD).
In our testing, Gemini charged a spread of 0.45% for converting SGD to USD or purchasing coins directly in SGD. This is in line with or better than what many Banks in Singapore charge for FX conversion.
However it is possible to convert FX much cheaply via our pick for the Best Broker in Singapore, Interactive Brokers (IB) and that would be our recommended option for FX conversion, if you can plan or wait for the conversion via IB.
Withdrawal We found the withdrawal process on Gemini to be quite simple as well. They work as advertised with relatively lower fees.
Fiat withdrawal via FAST was also painless once we had a destination account set up.
Trading on Gemini is simple although we recommend switching to the ActiveTrader interface ASAP to avoid the higher fees. The screenshots below show the two interfaces and there isn’t much difference between them, certainly nothing worth paying a large premium for.
Apart from the usual Limit and Market orders types, you can use Fill-or-Kill, Maker-or-Cancel, Immediate-or-cancel and Stop-Limit orders.
One you enter the order, the applicable fee is shown below the order.
Margin Lending & Borrowing Gemini does not offer margin loans, coin futures or the ability to borrow coins. According to Gemini this is because of their regulated status.
Gemini does offer the option to earn yield on your coins by lending them out. They work with institutional partners who borrow your coins and pay interest. Currently they work primarily with Genesis, which is an institutional cryptocurrency broker.
The rates offered by Gemini look to be competitive but there are huge differences between rates offered on the same currency on different platforms. We didn’t find any platform to be consistently better than others.
Coin | Gemini | FTX | Crypto.com | KuCoin | Gate.io |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
BTC | 1.01% | 0.88% | 0.25% | 0.73% | 0.21% |
ETH | 1.26% | 1.50% | 1.00% | 0.37% | 0.16% |
USDT | 1.00% | 2.00% | 2.96% | 2.14% | |
BNB | 40.00% | 19.14% | 5.84% | ||
USDC | 7.99% | 2.00% | 0.73% | ||
XRP | 1.00% | 0.50% | 1.84% | 0.34% | |
ADA | 1.00% | 2.59% | 0.02% | ||
SOL | 1.75% | 1.00% | 1.47% | 1.97% | |
LUNA | 4.52% | 11.57% | 0.97% | ||
DOT | 0.88% | 2.00% | 4.48% | 0.01% | |
AXS | 6.83% | 20.00% | 64.22% | 6.32% | |
COMP | 2.28% | 0.50% | 11.57% | 2.90% | |
DAI | 6.43% | 0.88% | 2.00% | 2.94% | |
MATIC | 2.02% | 10.00% | 2.00% | 5.24% | 0.14% |
DOGE | 0.88% | 0.37% | 0.05% | ||
Rates sampled on 8th Feb 2022. Rates change frequently. |
Comparison of lending rates on Crypto Exchanges
Reports You can check the positions you hold and the transaction history on Gemini. However the reports are not very customizable and offer fairly limited data. We did not find a P&L report.
Gemini gets a mixed report card from us on ease of use.
The website and the app are indeed very easy to use and the online help center is quite useful too.
But the site and app default to the more expensive Gemini Basic trading interface and it is really hard for a user to figure out that a cheaper option exists a couple of clicks away. The app doesn’t even offer the ActiveTrader option, which is also disappointing.
Its also the only major exchange to offer registration using SingPass and funding / withdrawal using FAST, which does make it a lot faster to set up and get started with.
We don’t think any crypto exchange offers a user experience that is materially better than the rest but Gemini does end up ahead of the rest because of the easy registration and funding options.
Gemini customer service is fairly average in comparison to other crypto exchanges. We could not find a helpline number and there is no live chat. You can submit questions on the Helpdesk page or with the chat bot. We received accurate and useful responses to our questions within 24 hrs.
Questions? Suggestions? See a mistake? Write to us!
First, do no harm. Lessons from the FTX collapse and the path forward for moolahgeeks.
Following the collapse of FTX, we have withdrawn all our recommendations in the cryptocurrency space.
Following the collapse of FTX, we have withdrawn all our recommendations in the cryptocurrency space.