Winklevoss Bitcoin Exchange Gemini Introduces Dynamic Trading Fees

Gemini, the New York-based bitcoin exchange founded by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has revamped its fee schedule, to encourage an "active, stable and efficient marketplace".

The service was launched just over four months ago and, according to a new blog post by president Cameron Winklevoss, has now collected sufficient data to determine the best fee strategy going forwards.

Winklevoss writes:

"We have decided to adjust our existing flat fee schedule to a real-time, dynamic maker-taker fee schedule."

Adopting the maker-taker fee system is aimed to encourage 'makers', who add liquidity to the exchange, which offers a BTC/USD market aimed at institutional investors.

Cameron Winklevoss explained that because liquidity-making orders do not fill immediately and they bear more market risk, the company "believes in offering greater incentives to makers".

To kick off the promotion, the new schedule will be available to all Gemini users for 30 days, during which traders will receive a 0.15% rebate on all liquidity-making trades and be charged 0.15% on all liquidity-taking trades.

The new fee schedule is open to all customers from 15:30 BST on 1st March to 15:30 BST on 31st March.

Fee concerns

The announcement follows comments from bitcoin traders that Gemini's original pricing model, charging both buyers and sellers on each trade, could prove an issue that will drive away retail traders – a group that could be essential for building liquidity.

Top bitcoin exchanges around the world offer greater liquidity than Gemini can yet offer, meaning traders on those exchanges are able to cash in and out of the market more quickly, a much more active market participants argued at the time, for profit-making.

One aspect that came under repeated criticism was the exchange's plan to charge 25 basis points (0.25%) to the buyer and seller on each side of any trade.

With today's announcement, Gemini seems to have taken these criticisms on board and is now offering a sliding scale of fees, and even rebates for liquidity makers (see table below).

Liquidity takers will pay fees of 25 bps but can be discounted to 15 bps under certain conditions (see the blog post for the full details).

The post notes that fees and rebates will be based on gross trading volume and the liquidity-making buy/sell ratio over the previous 30-day window.

Further, individual fee rates for traders will be reassessed every 24 hours and adjusted accordingly.

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