So , Gemini exchange was a failure ?

[mayax]

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).

You need massive volume to make it work. Which is why Coinbase is so upset about the blocksize limits - they cap the amount BTC is used and are therefore a threat to their business model.

on the other hand if you, as exchanger, wants the banks to allow you to use their services and to have the peace of the mind that thyt won't block your account, you need to be financial licensed.
there is the legal aspect too. the police can raid your place anyting if you run a financial business and you don't have a license.
 almost all the countries have laws regarding to that.

in USA and Europe, there many people in jail because of this thing. it's not a joke anymore and you cannot say "it won't happen to me"

to be financial licensed you need to respect A LOT of terms, laws and you have many obligations(to pay the taxes, to have external audit, to report transactions, to make REAL due diligence not the joke which is made now , etc) and you need MONEY; tons of cash for lawyes, papers and so on.

if you want to be anonymous like BTC-e is( there are many others), you cannot develop a serious financial business and you cannot grow. Yes, you can make money but not "SERIOS"  money and you always have the fear that your money can be locked by banks, gov

also, if you have financial license, you are requested to ask many documents from your clients which can be found as an annoying thing by those who are using BTC. More than that, BTC is mainly used by the black market and these people are not so happy to provide you these infos. In short, you won't have cash flow.
What can you do? You must find stupid investors in order to pump money in your business. This, can't last too long because any investor(even is stupid) will want the money back + profit and...guess what?! you won't be able to provide that.

This business(once you are regulated) will eat money monthly. you cannot run it from your home anymore, you cannot run it alone or with a single partner. You need to hire people, you need to pay salaries, to rent an office, to pay taxes, to pay, pay, pay...and in end you will see that it's not worth it just to be a BTC exchanger....

[gentlemand]

You need massive volume to make it work. Which is why Coinbase is so upset about the blocksize limits - they cap the amount BTC is used and are therefore a threat to their business model.

The opposite could be argued. There probably are Coinbase customers who haven't touched the blockchain in months moving between their site and their exchange and perhaps the odd merchant transaction too. No doubt they'll open a big ass lightning network channel too.

[alyssa85]

You need massive volume to make it work. Which is why Coinbase is so upset about the blocksize limits - they cap the amount BTC is used and are therefore a threat to their business model.

The opposite could be argued. There probably are Coinbase customers who haven't touched the blockchain in months moving between their site and their exchange and perhaps the odd merchant transaction too. No doubt they'll open a big ass lightning network channel too.

If people start using their coinbase wallet the way it was originally intended (to make purchases in the real world), the block limit is a problem.

Do you member that series of articles done by that Forbes reporter in 2013 about whether you could live on bitcoin? She was using a coinbase app, and her main problem was that there weren't retailers accepting BTC back then, the app worked fine as did rapid blockchain confirmations. If she did it now in a congested network it would be a whole other story.

[BayAreaCoins]

Gemini is good shit.

[wikenpp]

How can it be a failure? Since their launch they got a big volume and even better it was in the time when the price was starting to rise.
Most exchanges would be very jealous with such a start

[zenitzz]

With them your bitcoins are safely stored in the atmosphere https://gemini.com/

Even they have finance license it's not guarantee your money is safe if you save your bitcoin at there, see coinbase.com now their on issues go bankrupt.

[BayAreaCoins]

Gemini offers free wire deposits and free wire withdraws... I thought that was pretty damn good perk.

Coinbase charges $10 to process wire deposits... my local small town bank charges $5 for deposits.  Local bank charges $17 to send a wire and I'm not sure about Coinbase.

[mayax]

How can it be a failure? Since their launch they got a big volume and even better it was in the time when the price was starting to rise.
Most exchanges would be very jealous with such a start

which volume do you talk about?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

[gentlemand]

They have had volumes in the thousands on certain days, then it goes right back down to tumbleweed again very rapidly.

[lumeire]

They have had volumes in the thousands on certain days, then it goes right back down to tumbleweed again very rapidly.

Give it time guys, I'm not sure why, but they're not advertising as much as they should. Their plans for customer acquisition must be revamped, a good product w/o proper marketing is nothing at all.

[mayax]

you have to add that gold market is regulated and your funds cannot be stolen. BTC is not regulated and you will always have the fear that your wallet can be hacked. you cannot play a lot of money in BTC without having this fear.

on the other hand, you can make risky investments but very attractive without using BTC. There are high risk short time investments on market and i do not refer to HYIPs. Most of the banks or licensed investment companies are offering these products; again, without fear of being hacked.

[alyssa85]

Gemini's hype was too high and people had too high expectation, so when it's released people were disappointed and left gemini exchange.
I though it's already dead, gone or become scam exchange.

Or it could be that the Winklevii have ideas but struggle to execute them. Look at how Zuckerberg took their social media idea and then executed it better than them. This keeps happening.

[gentlemand]

Did they actually have any proper ideas regarding facebook? I was under the impression they were riding coattails to an extent and lucked out legally.

[mayax]

Gemini's hype was too high and people had too high expectation, so when it's released people were disappointed and left gemini exchange.
I though it's already dead, gone or become scam exchange.

How can it be a failure? Since their launch they got a big volume and even better it was in the time when the price was starting to rise.
Most exchanges would be very jealous with such a start

which volume do you talk about?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

Exchange from china shouldn't be counted because they use fake trading volume
But, even we don't count exchange from china, gemino only has about 1,27% trading volume from all exchange counted.

Source : http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

and they invested millions. they cannot recover the investment if they will only run an "exchanger". you cannot cover the monthly expensesfrom the exchanges fees if you are financial licensed...so they need to come with something else.

[Erzatium]

Gemini's hype was too high and people had too high expectation, so when it's released people were disappointed and left gemini exchange.
I though it's already dead, gone or become scam exchange.

How can it be a failure? Since their launch they got a big volume and even better it was in the time when the price was starting to rise.
Most exchanges would be very jealous with such a start

which volume do you talk about?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

Exchange from china shouldn't be counted because they use fake trading volume
But, even we don't count exchange from china, gemino only has about 1,27% trading volume from all exchange counted.

Source : http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

and they invested millions. they cannot recover the investment if they will only run an "exchanger". you cannot cover the monthly expensesfrom the exchanges fees if you are financial licensed...so they need to come with something else.

They can do pretty good on fees if they got a large volume. Nobody expects them to make profit or recoup millions in 1 year. Just look at twitter which is still making loss.

[alyssa85]

They can do pretty good on fees if they got a large volume. Nobody expects them to make profit or recoup millions in 1 year. Just look at twitter which is still making loss.

Well they are not really getting the high volumes they hoped for because of that incident where they reversed trades. Lots of people bailed when they did that.

[tn211]

They can do pretty good on fees if they got a large volume. Nobody expects them to make profit or recoup millions in 1 year. Just look at twitter which is still making loss.

Well they are not really getting the high volumes they hoped for because of that incident where they reversed trades. Lots of people bailed when they did that.

That's not a big issue which can't be fixed. If they got 'hacked' people would leave them permanently. But this is something they will be able to overcome.
Just give it a few months and people will forget it.

[alyssa85]

They can do pretty good on fees if they got a large volume. Nobody expects them to make profit or recoup millions in 1 year. Just look at twitter which is still making loss.

Well they are not really getting the high volumes they hoped for because of that incident where they reversed trades. Lots of people bailed when they did that.

That's not a big issue which can't be fixed. If they got 'hacked' people would leave them permanently. But this is something they will be able to overcome.
Just give it a few months and people will forget it.

Well the reversals happened five months ago and people are still talking about it. But you are correct, in about a year they will likely have moved on, especially if the rest of the bitcoin space is growing.

[bitcoin-hunter]

They can do pretty good on fees if they got a large volume. Nobody expects them to make profit or recoup millions in 1 year. Just look at twitter which is still making loss.

Well they are not really getting the high volumes they hoped for because of that incident where they reversed trades. Lots of people bailed when they did that.

That's not a big issue which can't be fixed. If they got 'hacked' people would leave them permanently. But this is something they will be able to overcome.
Just give it a few months and people will forget it.

Well the reversals happened five months ago and people are still talking about it. But you are correct, in about a year they will likely have moved on, especially if the rest of the bitcoin space is growing.

And with that remember that it was not a big hack like we saw at bitstamp. And even bitstamp managed to stay alive.
Just a little ego damage that's it.