Bitcoin Forum

Gemini, the long-awaited New York-based bitcoin exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and billed as the "Nasdaq of bitcoin", finally debuted on 8th October.

Featured in articles by The Financial Times, TechCrunch and Wired, and promoted via a TV appearance on Fox News, Gemini it succeeded in grabbing the attention of the mainstream media like few industry products before it.

While a success in terms of promotion, however, Gemini is showing signs it is struggling to appeal to bitcoin's active trading community. Though representatives of the exchange stated they're seeking to attract a more institutional clientele than their competitors, avid bitcoin traders tell CoinDesk that they believe this strategy will be difficult to execute.


here is the full article : http://www.coindesk.com/winklevoss-bitcoin-exchange-gemini-win-traders/

Anyone knows how much is the trading volume on their website comparing to the other exchanges ? it's kinda crappy because they don't make their price or their stats on the first page and we can't make an account unless we are from USA .

https://tradeblock.com/markets/gmni/xbt-usd/1h/

Looks like volume is increasing if you check the volume peaks. May be releated to the rising btc price and arbitrage opportunities though.

I still think any new exchange needs time to build a solid trading user base.

What the .. It's so damn low honestly , anyway I personally think we should give them few months and they should also expand to other countries because staying on USA only won't get them anything but low trading volume comparing to others .

yep volume is increasing pretty well, and dont forget they are not "opened" for all ;) so for me they have had a good start. lets give them few months to consolidate a little bit more and we will see if they are as good as expected ( or at least that i expected )

I think it is still too early to pass any judgement at this point. When more and more traders get involved that is where things will start to take off. One thing that I also notice is the wide spread involved. Hopefully that is not going to be the main stumbling block.

Because unregulated exchanges were working so well? How many disappeared with bitcoins? Regulation is not always the enemy, and in this case it's inevitable and carries the benefits of legitimizing and stabilizing the currency to a very large and reluctant population of non-adopters. Net good > bad.

give their exchange a decent amount of time to establish itself. large traders won't come just like that. they must be convinced to signup there and use actually use it. the more volume they generate, the earlier the traders will come.

The verification and funding process seems to be pretty slow, at least that's what I have heard, unfortunately I can't test it myself.
So I guess a lot of people who are interested in Gemini are not even able to trade there yet.

Hey, we shall give the guys a link to their website:

https://gemini.com/ (https://gemini.com/)

I guess most people haven't understood Gemini. This isn't for me, nor for any old bitcoiners. Gemini is for the newbies. It's designed for the people who were scared to buy BTC. All the people who were afraid with the MtGox scam. Now with Gemini, they should feel confident because it's fully licensed, registered, compliant, and all shiny from being run by rich folks coming from Harvard.

I wish them luck, and I believe they're doing a lot to help BTC, but personally I prefer to buy and sell BTC at a bar, on some remote table in the back. The transactions won't be reported to anyone, and nobody would remember anything about what happened.

I believe there will be big money goes into this, if only as a hedge. BTC seems to me a better bet than most other assets at the moment, and at the very least as good a bet as any.

Most people that would use Gemini are old people and generally out of the loop people when it comes to Bitcoin, the people that is already in the know uses other things to buy, probably enjoy the increased anonimity of Localbitcoins and more OTC oriented stuff and don't like the extra regulations of Gemini. Gemini will be useful once Bitcoin goes mainstream and panic buy starts by average joes and old money whales.

I said it few times in other threads, and I will say it again, I think that Gemini is very important for the whole Bitcoin ecosystem. I think it gives us another dose of legitimacy. It definitely looks after more institutional players and this is good, because these institutional people must have an exchange like Gemini to get into something like Bitcoin.

Us, ordinary people, we will already manage in the exchanges that we have until now.

Will all this happen over the night? Of course not. Patience is a virtue!

do you think it`ll fail?

or will it be better then coinbase or any other exchange falls the same way..

I think we shall help them. They're helping BTC a lot. If I meet someone American who is unfamiliar with BTC but would like to get into it, I'll happily recommend Gemini. They're assuredly the safest and cleanest place to buy BTC, right now.

Yes, it's time to help new business like we do for a new comer into bitcoin system. Gemini lags in producing challenging volumes compared to old exchanges. This is a common thing when a new business hit the market, people do analysis before start using, we must help them by using it at least with a partial amount.

too early to tell, i think at worst case it should succeed, in the country where it come from, i think new york, which is nice because right now they are eexcluded because of major regulation, from other exchange

For me that's definitely part of the Bitcoin experience :)

And I think it's too soon to say that Gemini hasn't won over traders.
Give them another couple of months and I'm sure the volume will increase.

I think this will be very positive for Bitcoin as a whole since they have some serious budget for marketing and promotion, hopefully geared towards newbies.

I'm not totally sure who their target market is. I'm not convinced it's the current crop of traders. They like lower fees and leverage. It does the job but it's rather vanilla. I guess their aim is to bring fresh and sceptical blood in.

The gemini exchanges doesn't have a stable marketing strategy at the moment. I think that the Winklevoss are waiting until the gemini exchange is stable and then they will start an aggressive marketing campaign in order to gain more users.

I think they do. Their plan right now is to appeal to the guys who would never have bought BTC via localbitcoins or through a small exchange whose reputation isn't well established. The bros make BTC available to all investors, even those who don't like to get their feet wet. They're doing some good!

But how is this any different from any other bitcoin exchange? Are they doing anything innovative, or just stealing market share by capitalizing on their names?

Sure, regulation brings good things in some cases, but let's not kid ourselves here, the people that is using now Bitcoin are usually libertarians, anarcho capitalists, or hackers/geeks, the normal folk are still unaware of Bitcoin, so this means, most of the people that is inside Bitcoin are ok with unregulated exchanges. Once Bitcoin goes mainstream then Gemini will see a lot of new users over there.

I for one am not OK with an unaccountable exchange. As we've seen time and time and time again the 'free market' is there to rape the unwary. In most cases it's a licence for incompetence or theft. When you chuck in large amounts of irreversible money it's a borderline no brainer that you'll get fucked.

My little time in the bitcoin community (less than 5 months) has shown me that bitcoiner's are an apprehensive bunch. Thy will shy away from something new and step back to watch what happens. Only the very new people to bitcoin will go into the Gemini exchange full tilt.

You should ask the people who lost money in Mt. Gox what they think of unregulated exchanges. Perhaps all that outrage was just a misunderstanding by all the libertarians and anarcho capitalists.   :D  I'm even a libertarian and I would never trust an unregulated exchange.

Wow, it doesn't really help either that the exchange rate per bitcoin on gemini is about $3 higher... I mean sure, they provide a "legit" exchange site for the more "industrial" cliental, but I'm sure that could be a very good reason as to why most people here in the U.S. still use other exchanges rather than them.

Looks like their trading volume remains stable around 400 btc. Have to be honest and say that I expected more volume from them by now.

Possibly their limitation to US customers is kicking their asses at the moment. There is a lot of volume to gain from Europe and China.

It will depend on how they target their network to acquire new user growth
Incentives and finding different potential groups would do them a fair bit as it is now their volumes do appear to be stable around 420 BTC :)

I know there was a plan to extend Gemini to Europe. After MtGox's failure, I guess most people will prefer to buy BTC from a company close to their home. If Gemini wants European customers, it will need to open an office locally, it will be easier now that the EJC has ruled that exchange services are exempted from VAT.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1217573 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1217573)

Well, I mean not only that, but you would have to look at the fact that they don't necessarily cater to the "small" bitcoin purchaser... They seem to be more delved in the field of dealing with "big" bitcoin companies, but the reality of it is that there just aren't that much anymore or right now, that are located in the US.  I think they would need to cater to the small man first before they go and try to sell bitcoins to the Bill Gates's and the Donald Trump's of the world.