It's very, very expensive to maintain a financial license. You need a lot of money monthly for salaries,accountant, due diligence shit, taxes, compliance, rent, lobby expenses, advertising and many, many other things.
It's a legit business and the legit businesses in the financial field are costing A LOT
Coinbase is doing the same. They have licences in almost all USA...much more expensive than Gemini.
. IMO, they will go bankrupt if nobody will pump money in them(no stupids to "invest" in a black hole from where they will never see any money back).
The exchangers who have financial license cannot survive from exchanges. The fees are too low to cover everything. I don't say about any profit because it doesn't exist.
I think Coinbase is burning at least 200K-300K per month only to keep the business as it is. Gemini a little bit lower.
It's so funny. I am looking to Coindesk.com and other similar websites.They are promoting the financial licenses and the regulation even these things mean the end of Bitcoin as it is.
BTC with financial licensed exchangers will not exist anymore because it was not made for such things.
Regulation means the exchangers will be forced to ask you a lot of papers(as the banks do).
Then, why would someone still use BTC when you can trade/speculate gold/FX in the same conditions and with giant brokers and not with Bitstamp shit, Coinbase shit or Gemini crap?!
More than that, you have the peace of the mind that nobody will steal your "commodity" as it can happen with Bitcoin