Bitcoin Forum

https://gemini.com/blog/update-to-the-gemini-trading-fee-schedule/

Thoughts? Did you use Gemini before? Will you continue?

Binance/gdax seem like decent alternatives now. What do you think?

Yes, this is an interesting topic, and I wonder why they believe it is good for their business to increase fees by 4x?  I just reviewed the fees on my account, and it appears that they had already increased the fees by 2x in late 2017.  Mostly in 2017, I was charged between .1% and .15% for trading, and in late 2017, most of my transactions increased to .25%.  This morning, I looked up that I had one transaction that executed at .75%, and I am not liking the increase in comparison to other exchanges.

If we are planning ahead, we can already see that a lot of the fees are increasing, so it is understandable that some of the exchanges are going to want to monetize, and we will see whether lower fee competitors are going to be inspired by these increased fees.

In the short term, I have decided to cancel some of my orders.  I did send a support ticket to Gemini to ask them whether orders that I have already placed before the fee increase keep the lower fees that were in place at the time that I placed the order, and I have not received a response on that question yet.

In the mean time, I will  move some of my orders to other exchanges.  I have not decided exactly yet whether I am going to open another trading account to compensate for not using Gemini.  I may need to research into options.  Currently, I have accounts on WEX, Bitstamp, GDAX and Bittrex, so those remain decent and lower fee options to move some of my orders.


Edit 1: I just received an e-mail response from Gemini, and they told me that if my limited order was already in place before the fees went up, then the old (and lower) fees would apply to the orders that were already in place before the increase.

Edit 2: Now I see why this thread is, perhaps, getting no responses, besides mine, it is in the alternative currency discussion section.. and who gives a ratt's ass about alternative currencies?  hahahahhaha

Edit 3: I am not sure about how to move a thread, but perhaps this thread should go into the main bitcoin discussion.  I have just "reported" this thread, and perhaps it could get moved by a moderator/administrator?

Another update from what I did.

I spent a decent amount of time in the past 24 hours searching around about how to adjust my transition away from using Gemini, and in recent hours, I took fairly significant steps at transitioning my Gemini orders to Binance... ... so in that regard, I set up a new Binance account, and set up several BTC sell orders on Binance.. and therefore cancelled my sell orders on Gemini...

Let's see how it plays out

For now, I am keeping my Gemini buy orders open, since those buy orders were set at Gemini's pre-April 2 lower rates.  But once those buy orders fill (if they do), then I will not set up any new buy/sell orders on Gemini, unless it is based on decisions to cash out into my Bank, or something like that ... so I will cross that bridge if I get there and if that becomes something that changes with me.... for some unexpected reason(s)... so in essence, I am moving those particular Gemini orders from 1% trading fees to .05% trading fees on Binance.

No idea why they have increased the fees for users so much.

1% maker/taker fee is pretty much the highest that I've seen in recent years on big exchanges. You can easily get better trading fees on other exchanges under 0.25%. It's a huge difference and it piles up if your volume isn't much daily but you trade consistently, and is unable to fall under a higher bracket on their fee division tables.

So yes, even without the BNB discounts Binance seems to be a better option at the moment.

No idea why you would trade with Gemini after this fee update if there is a difference by a factor of 10-20x of the trading fees, compared to better sites.

Gemini can still be good for USA customers to enter quickly in or out of dollars from your bank..... even though perhaps not regular trading.

I really don't understand the need for the increase in the fees as there is no reasonable justification for their actions. Mining fees have dropped significantly, timing confirmations have equally dropped. The height of it is little or no regard for their clients by not giving any notification and that is why regulations being clamoured for will always have their way. A company does not just go ahead to increase its fees without carrying along the regulatory authority just as banks will not wake up and charge arbitrary ATM fees, COT, alert charges, without recourse to the Central bank and notification of the customers.

4x is just too high and there is need for those using the platform to start considering alternative means of carrying out their transactions because their thinking is that earnings from cryptocurrency is "free money" and you can afford to pay any associated fees that comes with it. Accepting that and continual use of their services will only confirm their hypothesis and a justification to do 10x in the next review.

I have been thinking further about this, and sure, you are likely correct that smaller players will likely vote with their feet - however, bigger players might not.  Gemini had already chosen nearly fee free (or no fees) to move money from your bank to and from their service, and probably that choice has caused additional costs on Gemini - and therefore some of their users likely have been using Gemini to get in and out of bitcoin - however, surely their choice to 4x their fees on April 2, and they had 2x their fees 6 months earlier, which is more than 10x in their fees.  Gemini is going to measure to verify whether they are retaining enough of their BIGGER and likely desired users in order to off-set the smaller average Joes that they are losing by making their trading fees about 4x higher than other exchanges (their bet may pay off if there is not a lot of competition for BIGGER players to get in and out of the space, and some of the BIGGER players might prefer Gemini, even if Gemini's current liquidity does not seem to be as large as some of the other exchanges).

i guess, but why would you use them instead of GDAX at this point? 1% maker fee on gemini? that's pretty embarrassing for them. you can get 0% maker fees on GDAX. same fast and free ACH transfer and cheap wires, and free BTC withdrawals.

i really don't see what gemini is doing here. they need more volume and liquidity. this will only hurt them. and they didn't do anything to incentivize market makers to bring bigger liquidity either.

i wonder what the hell is going on over there....

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, yet it seems that we will have to see how it plays out.... and if they lose trade volume, as you and I seem to be predicting (and whether that loss of trade volume, assuming it occurs, negatively affects their overall business).

It is possible that Gemini will have to reverse themselves (on their fee policy), but perhaps they are just testing a theory in which they have some knowledge about their business that plays out for them to scare off some of their average Joes in the prestige pricing arena?

Gemini's introduction of block trading today, may be another indication of their attempts at prestige price direction and OTC rather than exchange trades?

https://gemini.com/blog/introducing-gemini-block-trading/

It seems that exchanges are trying to be competitive in their own various and unique ways, and if they can achieve a certain user base, then they can still be successful in their own right.  Surely, cannot knock Gemini for trying to appeal to the deeper pocket wall-street types, yet that just does not appeal to me when there seem to be quite a few options that are attempting to prove themselves.. and maybe some of these other exchange options will succeed? 

GDAX has been compared as a 0% fee trading option (at least in terms of maker fees), and yeah, GDAX seems to be trying to make money on other products, or at least the taker fees may make up for the low maker fees? yet I am surprised for how long GDAX have kept their maker fees at 0%, and the binance fees seem a bit more realistic with .1% maker fees, with a discount of 50% to buy their BNB token.. That 50% discount is a big incentive and helps to push their seemingly utility token.  I certainly could not resist buying a few BNB tokens, just to receive a 50% discount on fees.  Almost any time that I start with a new exchange, there is a bit of fear and a bit of a learning curve, and at first I felt that the Binance interface was a bit clunky and even buggy - but I am kind of getting used to it, how it loads, and surely I do like exchanges that allow me to sort the order of my outstanding orders (by amounts rather than by chronology of when the orders were placed), and Gemini does not have that feature, either.

It's outrageous. Bitcoin trading fees are already higher than stock trading fees (where you usually pay a flat fee rather than a percentage).

My advice - move to Kraken. They do maker taker fees. If you are a maker, the fee is just 0.16%.

Yeah exactly. I don't know why people would use Gemini when fees are so high for both makers and takers. The only reason would be that someone wants to get money in and out of bitcoin quickly but other than that, the fee schedule is outrageous.

Haven't used Gemini before, but the new fees would mean at least 4-5x more than other exchanges.

This presents absolutely no advantages whatsoever to use Gemini. If you're going to get verified anyways, just use Kraken/Binance/a bunch of other exchanges which all have more competitive rates than Gemini.

i think the appeal of gemini is its focus on compliance and licensing. kraken doesn't have that, and they also have a worse trading engine than gemini. so there are some trade-offs involved there. i still recommend GDAX in this situation. they're licensed in every state, and i trust them (due to their compliance overhead and VC backing) to do right by customers. similarly shitty trading engine vs. kraken but slightly edges it out, and also has 0% maker fees.


they're trying to bootstrap what they hope will be the biggest US-facing broker in the world (coinbase). as a result, they're desperate for market makers on the underlying exchange (GDAX), especially during high growth periods.

remember the ETH flash crash disaster last year---where there was a margin cascade and they refunded those whose SL triggered and honored the trades for those who profited?

yeah, they need that order book depth pretty bad. :P

I have been using Gemini for a while now and pretty happy with their service, until lately...I just found out the profit gained from trading some how diminished at the end...upon a closer look, I had quickly realized that Gemini fees are getting out of hand...I've switched to Binance and it seem to work better - my balance don't constantly shrinking...Binance site is not very user friendly but I'm getting the hang of it.  One thing I still haven figured out where does Binance list my transaction, which including cost and fee after the trade - does anybody know where to find it ?

I think they are just trying to generate more revenue
from small retail clients.

Big clients, who use Gemini´s Block Trading feature (minimum order
of 10 BTC or 100 ETH), still have a better fee schedule:
0.50 % Taker Fee
0.00 % Maker Fee

Maybe they are just focusing on bigger clients now, because most
newbies are starting out at Coinbase instead of Gemini anyway.

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