- Open in all 50 states, plus D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands
- Customer funds held 1:1 and withdrawable at any time, Gemini says
- SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 exams by Deloitte; listed on Nasdaq since 2025
Gemini Review: Fees, Safety and the Sign-Up Bonus
A New York-chartered exchange that leads with custody and audits rather than low fees. Here is what it costs, how its safety record holds up, who it suits and what to check before you sign up.
How we make money on this page. Pacific Blue Media Inc., which runs DaveManuel.com, is a Gemini affiliate through Impact. If you open an account through a Gemini link on this page and make a trade, we may earn a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and it is the reason this page has buttons. It does not change the fees, problems and history below, which come from Gemini's own pages. This page is information, not investment, tax or legal advice.
Gemini pitches itself at people whose biggest worry about crypto is the exchange itself. After FTX collapsed and the biggest hacks took billions, for a lot of people the first question is not which coin to buy but where to hold it. Gemini's answer is a New York trust charter, full-reserve custody, outside exams of its controls and a public listing. Those are real safeguards, but its record is not spotless: its Earn lending program froze in 2022, and New York's financial regulator fined it $37 million over how it ran it (section 08). Its fees are also higher than Coinbase's and Kraken's on the pro screens at the entry level.
01Who It Suits
Good for
- First-time buyers in any U.S. state who want a regulated, audited exchange
- Buying and holding long term, funded free by bank transfer
- People who want a simple app and a separate advanced screen in one account
- New customers who will make a qualifying trade within the offer window
Not for
- Frequent traders: entry-level fees run above Coinbase Advanced and Kraken Pro
- Hunters of small or brand-new coins: the list is shorter than the biggest exchanges'
- Readers outside the U.S.: this review covers U.S. accounts only. Gemini serves some other countries but has left Canada and is closing UK, EEA and Australian accounts, so check its country list
- Anyone funding with a debit card, which costs 3.49% a time
My take: for most people buying crypto a few times a year, the fee gap is a few dollars and where the coins are held is the bigger question. For anyone trading every week, the fee gap compounds and Gemini is hard to justify on cost alone.
02The Sign-Up Bonus, Explained
Gemini's new-customer offers usually pay a small amount of bitcoin once you verify your identity and trade a set amount within a set time. To be clear about what we know: our link does not carry a set bonus or a promo code, and Gemini says the amount it offers can vary from person to person. Gemini's own partner pages have shown offers of $10 or $15 in bitcoin for trading $100, but the offer that counts is the one Gemini shows you, so check the amount, deadline and conditions there. The "$50" offers you may see elsewhere come from Gemini's Referral Club, where an existing customer invites a friend; that is a separate program and does not apply through this page. Gemini's New User Incentive Program terms (dated October 30, 2025) set the general rules:
| Rule | What the terms say |
|---|---|
| Who qualifies | New customers only. Anyone who has ever had a Gemini account, under any email, is out, and so is anyone who came through a friend's referral link. |
| Verification | You must reach Verified Full Tier (a full identity check). A lower verification level does not qualify, even if you trade enough. |
| Time limit | 30 days from when your account is created and approved, unless the offer says otherwise. |
| Trades that count | Buys, sells and conversions that earn Gemini revenue. Trades between dollars and stablecoins, trades between stablecoins, deposits and withdrawals do not count. |
| When it is paid | Generally within seven days of meeting the requirement, but timing is not guaranteed. |
| Codes | Use the link or code when you open the account. Gemini says it has no duty to add an offer afterwards. |
| Same offer for everyone? | Not always. Gemini may assign different reward amounts to different users; the offer shown to you is the one that applies. |
| Tax | Rewards can count as taxable income. Bitcoin received as a reward can also rise or fall in value after it lands. |
Gemini's Referral Club, where existing customers share a personal invite link, is a separate program with its own amounts and rules. The terms above exclude anyone who signed up through a referral, so a friend's invite and our link cannot be combined.
03Is Gemini Safe?
| What we checked | |
|---|---|
| Yes | Licensed and supervised. Gemini Trust Company, LLC is a fiduciary and qualified custodian under New York Banking Law, licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Gemini has been moving most U.S. customers outside New York to Gemini Moonbase, LLC, a licensed money transmitter, so not every account sits at the New York trust company. |
| Yes | Held 1:1. Gemini says all customer funds are held 1:1 and can be withdrawn at any time, with customer money kept apart from the company's own. |
| Yes | Examined from outside. SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 exams by Deloitte, most recently covering October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for its information security. |
| Yes | Public company. Gemini Space Station, Inc. listed on Nasdaq under GEMI in September 2025, so it files audited financial statements with the SEC. |
| Partly | Insured. U.S. dollars may be eligible for FDIC pass-through insurance through Gemini's partner banks. Crypto is not FDIC insured. Gemini says it insures against certain losses of crypto in its online hot wallet, subject to limits. |
| Past | Earn and the regulators. Gemini's lending program froze when its partner Genesis halted withdrawals on November 16, 2022. New York's Department of Financial Services found Gemini had not adequately vetted or monitored Genesis and fined it $37 million in February 2024; the New York Attorney General's June 2024 settlement bars Gemini from running any crypto lending program in New York. Earn users got 100% of their assets back in kind by June 2024. Earn is closed. See section 08. |
These are safeguards, not guarantees. Full reserves and outside exams of its controls lower the risk that customer coins are lent out or go missing, but they do not remove operational, hacking or withdrawal risk, and the 1:1 figure is Gemini's own statement, not a government guarantee. None of it protects you from the price of the coin itself. For how much the big exchanges hold, see our Crypto Exchange Reserves Monitor.
04Fees, Honestly
Gemini has two ways to buy. The simple app screen is easy but its price is not fixed in advance: Gemini's fee schedule (dated February 15, 2026) says the fee depends on your payment method, order size, the market and the coin, a spread is built into the price, and similar orders can cost different amounts. You see the total on the review screen before you confirm, so always look before you tap. ActiveTrader, the advanced screen in the same account, has a published schedule:
| Your 30-day trading volume (or balance) | Maker | Taker |
|---|---|---|
| Starting out ($0) | 0.600% | 1.200% |
| $10,000 (or $1 million held) | 0.400% | 0.800% |
| $25,000 (or $5 million held) | 0.250% | 0.500% |
| $75,000 (or $15 million held) | 0.125% | 0.250% |
| $1 million | 0.050% | 0.100% |
Gemini API and ActiveTrader fee schedule, effective September 1, 2026; the full table runs to $250 million. A maker order waits on the order book at your price; a taker order fills right away at the market. An older ActiveTrader page on gemini.com still shows lower rates (0.20% and 0.40%); the newer dated schedule is the one used here, and your order screen shows the fee that actually applies.
Moving money in and out (Gemini transfer fee schedule, January 20, 2026):
| Transfer | Gemini fee |
|---|---|
| Bank transfer (ACH) in or out | Free |
| Wire in | Free (your bank may charge) |
| Wire out, U.S. dollars | $25 |
| Debit card deposit | 3.49% |
| PayPal deposit | 2.50% |
| Crypto out | Network fee, shown first |
The cheap way to use Gemini: fund it by bank transfer, then buy on ActiveTrader with a limit order priced below the current asking price, so it rests on the order book until someone sells to you. Only a resting order gets the maker rate; a limit order that fills the moment you place it is charged the taker fee. The expensive way: a debit card and the instant-buy button. On $500, the card alone costs $17.45 before any trading fee.
05What You Can Buy
Gemini lists the large coins (bitcoin, ether, solana and the rest of the familiar names), a handful of stablecoins including its own Gemini Dollar (GUSD), and a selection of Solana and Ethereum tokens. The list is shorter than at the biggest exchanges, and some coins are restricted by where you live: USDT cannot be traded by customers in New York, a few tokens are not available in New York at all, and some newer listings are only open to customers on the Gemini Moonbase entity. Check Gemini's supported-crypto list for the coin you want before you sign up.
06Staking
Gemini lets you stake ETH, SOL, MON and HYPE with no minimum and no transfer or redemption fee. It keeps a Staking Services Fee of up to 35% of the rewards the network pays, rates move and are not guaranteed, and getting your coins back takes time: 6 to 60 days for ETH and usually 3 to 4 days for SOL, with the price still moving while you wait. Staking is offered only in certain U.S. jurisdictions, and Gemini does not list them on its staking page, so check in the app.
07The Gemini Credit Card
Gemini also offers a Mastercard issued by WebBank that pays its rewards in bitcoin or other crypto instead of cash. It is a credit card, with credit card costs:
| Item | Terms |
|---|---|
| Rewards | 4% on gas, EV charging, transit, taxis and rideshare (on up to $300 of spending a month, then 1%); 3% dining; 2% groceries (not Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, candy stores or bakeries); 1% on everything else |
| Annual fee | None |
| Purchase APR | 18.74% to 34.74%, variable, based on your credit |
| Cash advance APR | 29.74%, variable |
| Fee on purchases abroad | None |
| Late fee | Up to $35 |
Gemini Credit Card rates and fees, September 25, 2026, and Gemini's rewards tiers help page. Crypto rewards can lose value. If you carry a balance, the interest will outweigh the rewards; our cash-back card comparison covers cards that pay in dollars.
08What Went Wrong: Earn
Gemini Earn let customers lend their crypto to Genesis Global Capital for interest. When Genesis halted withdrawals on November 16, 2022, in the wake of FTX, Earn customers could not get their coins back. It took until 2024: Gemini says initial distributions of about 97% came in May 2024, and the final distribution on June 20, 2024 brought Earn users to 100% of the assets owed to them, returned in kind.
Gemini was not just a bystander. In a February 2024 consent order, New York's Department of Financial Services found that Gemini had not adequately vetted or monitored Genesis, that its statements about that vetting were misleading, and that it kept no loss reserve for the program until August 2022. Gemini agreed to a $37 million penalty and to contribute at least $40 million toward Earn customers' recovery. In June 2024 it settled the New York Attorney General's lawsuit, agreeing to return about $50 million in digital assets to Earn investors and to a ban on operating any crypto lending program in New York.
Earn is closed and is not part of what you sign up for today. It is still worth knowing for two reasons: the trouble came from lending customer assets to a third party, which full-reserve custody is meant to rule out, and it shows Gemini's own risk controls failed once, by its regulator's account.
09Gemini vs Coinbase vs Kraken
The fairest comparison is the advanced trading screen each exchange publishes a schedule for, since simple-buy prices on all three include a spread.
| Exchange, advanced screen | Maker at entry | Taker at entry | Next step down |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini ActiveTrader | 0.60% | 1.20% | 0.40% / 0.80% from $10,000 a month |
| Coinbase Advanced | 0.50% | 0.90% | 0.35% / 0.75% from $10,000 a month |
| Kraken Pro | 0.40% | 0.80% | 0.30% / 0.60% from $2,500 a month |
Each exchange's own fee schedule, checked November 13, 2026. Fees fall further at higher volumes on all three.
On a $1,000 market buy at the entry tier, that is $12 at Gemini, $9 at Coinbase and $8 at Kraken. The difference is real but small for occasional buyers, and it grows quickly for active traders. Whether the extra few dollars buy you anything is your call: Coinbase and Kraken are also long-running, regulated U.S. exchanges, and this review does not compare their custody records. Gemini's case rests on the safeguards in section 03, weighed against the Earn history in section 08.
10How to Open an Account
- Start from the link. Open the account through the button on this page, so the offer shown is attached at sign-up.
- Verify your identity. Have a photo ID ready. The new-customer offer needs full verification, not a partial one.
- Fund it by bank transfer. ACH is free; a debit card costs 3.49%.
- Make a qualifying trade in time. Buy within the window the offer states, usually 30 days. A trade between dollars and a stablecoin does not count.
- Lock it down. Gemini requires two-factor authentication; an authenticator app or a security key is safer than text messages. For large long-term holdings, decide whether to keep them on the exchange or in a wallet you control.
11Questions
Is Gemini safe and legit?
Gemini is a U.S. exchange founded in 2014 and listed on Nasdaq (GEMI) since September 2025. Gemini Trust Company is a New York trust company licensed by the state's Department of Financial Services, Gemini says customer funds are held 1:1 and can be withdrawn at any time, and Deloitte has examined its controls (SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2). Those are real safeguards, not guarantees. Its record also includes the Earn lending freeze of 2022, for which New York's financial regulator fined it $37 million in 2024. Crypto itself is not FDIC insured and prices can fall a long way.
Is Gemini available in my state?
Yes. Gemini lists all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Some coins cannot be traded in New York, and staking is offered only in certain U.S. jurisdictions.
Does Gemini have a sign-up bonus?
Gemini runs new-customer offers, usually a small amount of bitcoin after you verify your identity and make a qualifying trade within a set time, often 30 days. The offer is shown on the page you sign up from and must be used at sign-up; Gemini does not add it afterwards. Trades between stablecoins and dollars, and deposits, do not count.
Is there a Gemini promo code?
Gemini's offers are attached to the link or code you use when you open the account, and its terms say it does not have to apply one later. Codes posted on coupon sites often belong to other programs or have expired. People who already had a Gemini account under any email are not eligible.
What fees does Gemini charge?
Bank (ACH) deposits and withdrawals are free. Debit card deposits cost 3.49% and PayPal deposits 2.50%. Simple buys carry a variable fee plus a spread that is shown before you confirm. On ActiveTrader, Gemini's September 1, 2026 schedule starts at 0.60% for maker orders and 1.20% for taker orders, falling as your 30-day volume rises.
Is Gemini cheaper than Coinbase?
Not on the pro screens at the entry level. Gemini's ActiveTrader schedule starts at 0.60% maker and 1.20% taker, against 0.50% and 0.90% on Coinbase Advanced and 0.40% and 0.80% on Kraken Pro. All three fall as you trade more. Gemini's case rests on its custody setup and outside exams, not on the lowest fee.
Is crypto on Gemini FDIC insured?
No. U.S. dollars held at Gemini may be eligible for FDIC pass-through insurance through its partner banks, but crypto is not covered by the FDIC. Gemini says it carries insurance against certain losses of crypto held in its online hot wallet, subject to limits.
Can Canadians use Gemini?
No. Canada is not on Gemini's list of supported countries, and Gemini closed its Canadian accounts at the end of 2024. It has also closed accounts in the UK, the European Economic Area and Australia.
Is the Gemini exchange the same as Google Gemini?
No. The Gemini exchange is the crypto company started by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Google Gemini is an unrelated AI product. Make sure an app you download is published by Gemini, the exchange.
12Sources and Changes
- Gemini: Areas of Availability, Trust Center, API and ActiveTrader fee schedule (September 1, 2026), Gemini fee schedule (February 15, 2026), transfer fee schedule (January 20, 2026)
- Gemini: New User Incentive Program terms (October 30, 2025), staking, Earn updates, Are my funds insured?, supported crypto
- Gemini Credit Card: rates and fees (September 25, 2026), rewards tiers
- Coinbase Advanced fee tiers; Kraken Pro fees
- Gemini announces pricing of its initial public offering (September 11, 2025)
- New York State Department of Financial Services, consent order with Gemini Trust Company (February 2024); New York Attorney General, Attorney General James recovers $50 million from crypto firm Gemini (June 14, 2024)
Everything above was checked on November 13, 2026. Fees, offers and coin lists change; Gemini's own pages and your order screen are the final word. More from DaveManuel Money: all comparisons, the capital gains tax calculator (crypto sales are taxed as property), the tax-loss harvesting calculator and bitcoin price history.
This page is for information, not investment, tax or legal advice. Crypto is volatile, and you can lose some or all of what you put in.
Corrections and Updates
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| November 13, 2026 | Added the New York regulator findings on Earn (the $37 million Department of Financial Services penalty and the Attorney General lending ban) and corrected the availability line: Gemini serves some countries outside the U.S.; this review covers U.S. accounts. |
Every correction to a published figure on this site is logged on Sources and Methods.
Cite This Page
This page is free to cite and link. Its figures come from Gemini's fee schedules, Trust Center, availability list and offer terms; Coinbase and Kraken fee schedules and are kept current, so please include the date you accessed it.
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|---|---|---|
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| APA | Manuel, D. (2026). Gemini Exchange Review: Fees, Safety and the Sign-Up Bonus (U.S.). DaveManuel.com. Retrieved November 14, 2026, from https://www.davemanuel.com/money/us/crypto/gemini/ | Copy |
| Chicago | Manuel, Dave. “Gemini Exchange Review: Fees, Safety and the Sign-Up Bonus (U.S.).” DaveManuel.com. Accessed November 14, 2026. https://www.davemanuel.com/money/us/crypto/gemini/. | Copy |
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Source data: Gemini's fee schedules, Trust Center, availability list and offer terms; Coinbase and Kraken fee schedules. Updates: Checked weekly. How we build our data pages.