Gemini

Three separate questions sit inside this one, and they have different answers.

Custody: strong. Customer assets are held by Gemini Trust Company, LLC, a New York limited-purpose trust company chartered by the Department of Financial Services in October 2015. Under a trust charter, customer assets are held in trust for the customer, and the capital and examination rules are stricter than under a money-transmitter licence. We found no case of a hack draining exchange customer balances. The one data incident on record, in December 2022, was a leak at a third-party vendor that exposed about 5.7 million email addresses and partial phone numbers, which are useful to phishers.

Side products: where the damage happened. Gemini Earn paid interest by lending customer crypto to Genesis Global Capital. When Genesis froze withdrawals in November 2022, about $940 million belonging to 340,000 Earn users was stuck. Gemini ended Earn in January 2023. Under a February 2024 NYDFS settlement it agreed to return at least $1.1 billion and pay a $37 million fine. Users received 100% of their coins back in kind by mid-2024, and because crypto prices had risen, the coins were worth more than twice their dollar value at the freeze. The SEC dropped its Earn case with prejudice in January 2026. Holding coins on the exchange and lending them out were always different risks, and only the lending failed.

The company: under strain. Gemini lost money through 2025 and 2026. In Q2 2026 it lost $107.7 million on $45.5 million of revenue. In April 2026 Ripple extended it a $250 million credit line, and in May the founders' fund put another $100 million in. A trust charter keeps customer assets segregated from the company's own, which matters in exactly this situation. Even so, a customer of a struggling custodian can face delays and disruption without losing coins.

Gemini runs a spot crypto exchange with two front ends. The standard app is simple and expensive. ActiveTrader is an order-book interface for more active users. The group also runs institutional custody and, since late 2025, regulated derivatives: it received a CFTC designated contract market licence in December 2025 and a clearing licence in April 2026. That opened the way to prediction markets and a clearinghouse launched in August 2026. It added commission-free stock trading in July 2026.

ActiveTrader pricing got much steeper for small accounts on 1 September 2026. The new base tier is 0.60% maker and 1.20% taker, and you need $1 million of 30-day volume before taker fees reach 0.10%.

Your tier is recalculated daily from either volume or assets held, whichever gives the lower fee. For a retail customer trading a few thousand dollars a month, a 1.20% taker fee is among the highest of any major exchange. Rest limit orders to pay the maker rate. Source: Gemini fee schedule.

Gemini Space Station, Inc. listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on 12 September 2025 under the ticker GEMI. It priced at $28, opened at $37.01, and was valued at about $3.3 billion. It did not hold up.

The shareholder suit claims the IPO documents hid a planned strategy change and senior departures. The February restructuring put about $11 million of charges into Q1 2026.

Most people who search for Gemini are looking for its card. It is a World Elite Mastercard issued by WebBank that pays rewards in crypto rather than points, with no annual fee and no foreign transaction fee.

You can take rewards in bitcoin or any of 50-plus tokens listed on Gemini, including an XRP edition that launched in 2025, and switch at any time. Because rewards are paid in crypto, you effectively buy a small volatile position with every purchase. For tax purposes, check how rewards are treated where you live.

The card has become a large part of the business, and it has caused problems. In Q2 2026 Gemini booked a $16.1 million provision for credit losses after an identity-fraud event in the card portfolio. The card is a credit product from a US bank, so it sits outside Gemini's custody arrangements.