Gemini just increased their trading fee?

[Baofeng]

Anyone notice it? I wasn't aware of it because all attention are in the bull run that we have right now. But if you check their website:

Web Fee Schedule

All orders placed via our website application1 (each, a “Web Order”) incur both a convenience fee (“Convenience Fee”) and a transaction fee (“Transaction Fee”); see Fee Examples. Before you place your Web Order, you will be quoted a firm price that includes the Convenience Fee (the “Quoted Price”). In addition, we will display your Transaction Fee, which is determined according to the amount of your Web Order:

https://gemini.com/web-fee-schedule/#web-fee-schedule

So now the new fees will be "1.49% "transaction fee" plus a .5% "convenience fee". As far as I can remember, it was previously just 1% flat fee.

Or are they really taking advantage as well of this bull run to make more money in anticipation that more traders will suddenly jump again?

[coupable]

It was expected that some exchanges will increase fees after the confirmed hack of Binance. As Gemini is a reputed platform winning more trust by the latest news.
Let's see statistics after a week more.

[figmentofmyass]

wtf is their goal here? why would anyone ever pay 1.99% for the privilege of using gemini?! this fee schedule is much closer to coinbase's retail broker service rather than any real spot exchange.

their flat 1% fee was already ridiculous compared to their competitors. kraken has 0.16% maker fees and coinbase pro has 0.15%. i don't understand how they plan to compete with these fees.

i do notice this footnote however---"1 “Website application” refers to the interface found at https://exchange.gemini.com and does not refer to the Gemini ActiveTraderTM interface." i'm not sure what the Gemini ActiveTrader interface is but maybe it's like coinbase pro where fees are much lower than the regular coinbase website.

[TryNinja]

~

They are probably aiming at the regular Joe that doesn't know anything about BTC and just wants to invest on it because it's on the media. Remember that many people used Coinbase (and paid big fees) instead of GDAX (now Coinbase Pro) which had 0% fees. Gemini looks like the user-friendly and expensive service aimed for the masses (at least IMO).

[vit05]

When your customers are the average joes, your costs are higher as well. Need more humans to solve problems and situations that arise due to user failures, the cost with the user support should be high. In addition, Gemini should be considered a premium exchange.

[Quickseller]

You can still trade on Gemini via their Active Trader^TM platform, that is similar to CoinbasePro, and will be charged a 1% fee if your 30 day rolling volume is less than $25k.

Gemini appears to be moving towards the model that Coinbase (not coinbase pro) used, that is to attract retail customers who are willing to pay a significant markup to buy or cashout. I suspect their trading volume was insufficient to generate enough revenue, even though their fees are among the highest in the industry, if not the highest. They appear to have given up on trying to compete with "real" exchanges and appear to be competing with LBC traders (and CB).

You can also create an API to get even lower fees.