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Gemini, the New York-based bitcoin exchange currently being developed by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has received two key approvals from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).

Gemini Trust Company received approval on 23rd September for its Articles of Organization, and was granted an exemption from the deposit insurance requirements of Section 32 of the Banking Law, steps president Cameron Winklevoss said put it on the "one yard line" for completing its current goal of entering the US market.

Cameron Winklevoss explained that, with its Articles of Organization approved, Gemini Trust Company is now an established entity, which he said positions it to potentially begin formalizing its relationships with banking providers and vendors.


Full article : http://www.coindesk.com/gemini-exchange-moves-toward-launch-nydfs-approvals/

Anyone have more informations about the twins exchange ? Hopefully it's going to be good with different payment methods and limits and this kind of things ...

Wow that's the great news.
Like many other people, believes in Gemini exchange is to save bitcoin from the falling price. I also have belief on Winklevoss brothers, they will definitely will take bitcoin into moon. Lets watch how and what difference could make into bitcoin community as it is a long awaited exchange.

Is it just me, or is this whole Gemini / Bitcoin ETF thing taking FORRREVVEERRR...

It has literally been YEARS.

Is this the normal amount of time that someone needs to spend getting 'regulated' in the US ? Or are the twins just making it take ages.. ?

What happened to the Land of the Free.. (To do whatever you can, as long as we say you can )

( Regulation is a racket anyway. )

Looks like it's coming along, albeit slowly. I'm sure they already have their "banking partners" lined up so hopefully it won't take too long for the next step.

It is taking a very long time indeed. However, if it launches properly and it is fully regulated then we can expect Bitcoin to take off. Essentially ETFs take a good amount of time to get created, however this is taking a bit more. The first time that the ETF was mentioned was 2-3 years ago I believe.

Anyone that still believes that the US is 'the land of the free' is deluded.

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This is actually very good news even though this does not mean that Gemini is ready to be used by customers. We will have to wait a while longer, so I'm hoping that we see results in the first quarters of 2016.

How long did it take for the Copper ETF to be approved? 2-3 years? Bitcoin should double or triple that, easy. New asset class and all. The SEC isn't known for being a fast mover. :D

Yes it is taking forever, but this is how thing work in the US, and especially in the state of New York where you see what they did with the famous BitLicense thing. It's not surprising at all that it takes this much time. Bureaucracy is a b***h!

This is an awesome news though. Thanks OmegastarScream for sharing it! Slowly but surely we are getting there!

So launch in about two weeks ?  ;D

Please read the thread before posting next time.
I doubt that we will see a launch 'very soon'. Sometime in 2016 is probable.

lol you should see some other countries. I dont think USA is famous by its birocracy, quite the opposite.  Reality is that things in Normal world turns way slower then in Crypto world.

The ETF is going to take a long time yet I fear. Looks like Gemini could finally be up & running soon though, hopefully no longer than a couple of months. We need some bullish news.

Yes you are right, France is for example worse bureaucracy wise then the US. Things here take twice as long and for finish everything, you need a stack of papers. I also noticed that there is no joking around in the US when it comes to money, questions about money, money licenses, etc. Over there everything has to be fair and square. In France on the other side, still many things can slide and go unnoticed.

Since the Gemini and ETFs are about the money, I am not surprised that all the regulations have to be followed in the US and that it takes this long.

I read the thread. 3 Months ago they said in an interview, launch will be in about two weeks, I was obviously making fun off the next "soon".

Sounds like a good step forwards on an extremely long process.

I thought the ETF was meant to be ready for the end of 2014. In that time, someone else has beaten winklevoss to launching a bitcoin ETF.

My personal theory is that they want to make their parents proud by appearing to be doing exciting financial things when in reality they sit around playing video games all day while stringing along us chumps. I reckon they can drag it out for at least another five years.

Pretty sure the last quarter of 2015 is what they were mentioning and shooting for. We're just entering this quarter and things seem to be progressing.

What is it stopping them from launching sooner? First mover advantage is now lost.

They have to get approval from a US government body called the securities and exchange commission (SEC) before they can launch the ETF. The SEC moves at a glacial pace and can take years to decide whether to grant or deny approval. There is nothing the twins can do to make the SEC speed up, they can only wait for its decision.

The Gemini exchange could open before the ETF but that still needs to wait untl it gets permission to open from some other regulators.

I would rather have them open sooner than later.. I think the twins will single handedly draw in the most capital to bitcoin ever just by opening this exchange.

Rule compliant and backed by known feel funded owners. Hardly a risk for investors.

To be honest I stopped following the twins closely when I realized that everytime you think the launch must be close and then the reality is it will take another few more months.
I will be happy when they open their doors and hopefully this will help to get new fresh money into the system and spreads adoption and usage.
But for now my big excitement and expectation is gone.

I wouldn't blame them. I think that they have the best intentions. It's the government, lawmakers and regulators. They can take as much time as they want and they have a great excuse, it's a new technology and it takes time.

Also this is the great way to stall us and to slow down the adoption of Bitcoin, of course if they want to do so. They can be doing it almost seamlessly.

c'mon guys don't blame them just because it is taken so long, i really understand your frustration, i want this service now also :P but im pretty sure that those twins are trying to bring it to us as fast as possible, but you guys should know how all those things are working, i mean really slow...

i hope that they open his service ( the day that it comes true ) with no restrictions, i mean that i dont want to see some restrictions for european people or something like that.

no funds insurance??

now that just went from a legit investment company, to a MTGox clone... im guessing no one cares about the impact of not insuring deposits..

They need to wake up and start getting this thing operative yesterday. I mean we've been waiting for what, years now? for a good exchange to arrive, and there's little time before people start refering to Gemini as some sort of vaporware thing. At this point im not sure if it will have any impact on the price at all. I just hope old money and traditional people with lots of dollars find an easy way to securely invest in Bitcoin with this.

I don't see why yet another exchange is such a big deal at all. Simply because it comes from two public figures it's no reinvention of the basic concept and there's no reason to believe it will be fundamentally better or more secure than the existing exchanges.

If you ask me, the twin are too late to the show to land a major success with their exchange. The same applies to their ETF, if it takes another 1-2 years to launch, because investment vehicles for Bitcoin will only be needed for a transition period until Bitcoin becomes mainstream and direct ownership will be the norm.

ya.ya.yo!

To be fair I've been under the impression that they were a little taken aback by itBit's charter announcement. Remember that back in the 1st quarter of this year they were up in the medias confident that the BitLicenses were the last working mile for launch of Gemini.

Then itBit's trust company charter happens in early may. Two months later we learn Gemini begins seeking approval for a similar charter.

My question is: if that was their plan all along why bother with the BitLicenses? From what I have gathered the trust status supersedes, at least to an important extent, the license.

I still trust that their projects will become centrepiece in Bitcoin's next ride but this one aspect raised a little doubt. I think they have the connections to make this thing work though. In fact I'm sure a lot of bigger players are now driving this venture from behind the scene.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the importance of connections. I think the Winklevoss confidence and part of the hype around their projects stems from the proposition that they have felt a strong interest from old money investors and they know "if they build it they will come". A fully compliant, institution friendly, exchange promising to become a source of liquidity for a NASDAQ trading ETF is something that will raise eyebrows.

You speak of "yet another exchange" but I'm curious what do you consider the competition to be? For an American-based institutional investor there's really no one but itBit & Coinbase. Then again, Coinbase being a Silicon Valley product I don't believe they are an appealing offering for NY pockets, yet.

So if you ask me, the twins are still very much on track to establish an household brand in the Bitcoin ecosystem and considering next year's halving they may do so with remarkable timing.

That's pretty strange. If Itbit can do it, so can they.

They are leaving the fiat insurance to their prospective banking partners. As for the Bitcoins, I'm not sure how or if they intend to insure them. Bitcoin insurance must be a difficult proposition with the volatility inherant to Bitcoin. If they get an insurer to insure them and later Bitcoin shoots up in value would the insurer be prepared to pay their full value after a hack? Gemini might have to sue in that eventuality. Bitpay lost when it tried to sue its insurer after it was hacked, though it lost due to its own gross negligence.

SEC is known to be a slow department filled with red tape everywhere. Judging from the previous ETF's by various bigger companies, Gemini's actually on a pretty respectable timeframe.

So why were they beaten to market, there is already a Bitcoin ETF?

There is nothing on the market that resembles anything on the scale of their proposed NASDAQ ETF.

There's a tech ETF that holds 0.25% of its fund in Bitcoin. That's a rather different proposition.

The twins won't be too late to launch this exchange for the big players. Maybe for us, it would rather have been yesterday, but I still think this will have a massaive impact on bitcoin investments from the big guys.

This opens the gates to VC and other money, and the Twins will use their connections to draw them in.

This is where the hold up is... The government does not operate at the speed of private companies, if the wheels are not greased.  ;) ...Well that is how things operate in my country. If you want to push your

request or application... you have to oil the palm. They obviously have to wait for the government to understand the issue, and play the waiting game.

They are still in front of other competition trying to do the same thing, so it's safe to say that they will be the first company to do this in NY.  ;)

Trust charter confirmed:

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/10/05/bitbeat-winklevoss-twins-gemini-exchange-gets-trust-license/

edit:

To open on thursday  :o

This thursday? I'm quite surprised because of the initial comments. I was expecting it in 2016. If they launch in 3 days and it gets media coverage we could be heading somewhere. Let's hope that everything works out as planned.

The gates have been wide open, and itBit has been there to welcome them with their NYDFS charter. Gemini just barely showed up.

well....no. good news but it is not the ETF. maybe you are confused.

and for my part: i cant see a falling bitcoin price  ;)

big whoop...I get an email on this from them.....they are gonna open thurs oct 8th and the price goes up 2 bucks for btc :(

now if they annouced in the same email that they had gotten 'unapproved" btc price would have dropped imho about 50 bucks :)

go figure

with only price movement on bad news . say in 2016 I'm looking at 150 buck btc at the rate this seems to be working out ...at least from a real world press FUD point of view :(

Price wouldn't have dropped 50 bucks on "unapproved" e-mail. First, they would never send it like that and second, market was already factoring a scenario where it would take months more to release. Also, if other bitcoin companies got approved, gemini should have no problem at all to get it.

To prevent spam , I'am going to close this topic and let's continue discussion about this Exchange here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1201174.40