Winklevosses’ Gemini to cut jobs, scale down in crypto retreat

[LONDON] The crypto exchange run by billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss is slashing as much as 25 per cent of its workforce and winding down operations in the UK, European Union and Australia, marking a major pullback for two of the industry’s most high-profile figures amid a rout in the sector.

New York-based Gemini Space Station said that it will trim as many as 200 positions across its global workforce, including staff in the US and Singapore, according to a filing on Thursday (Feb 5).

Founded in 2014, Gemini has largely failed to attract significant market share despite being one of the earlier crypto exchanges. It reported a loss of US$159.5 million in November, flagging costs from its initial public offering two months earlier and broader marketing efforts.

“These foreign markets have proven hard to win in for various reasons and we find ourselves stretched thin with a level of organisational and operational complexity that drives our cost structure up and slows us down,” the Winklevoss twins said on Thursday.

The news came as a sell-off in crypto markets gained momentum, with Bitcoin dropping below US$70,000, the lowest level since November 2024. Gemini did not mention the price decline as a factor, though Bitcoin’s precipitous drop has been impacting firms across the industry for months.

Gemini shares fell as much as 9.1 per cent to US$6.67 in early trading, marking an all-time low since its debut on public markets in September. Its stock has fallen more than 85 per cent from a high of US$45.89 on Sep 12 just after its IPO, pushing the exchange’s market value from a US$3.8 billion peak to just US$800 million this month.

Early adopters

The Harvard-educated Winklevoss brothers turned cash scored from a settlement over their part in the creation of Facebook into crypto riches, buying Bitcoin early on in the cryptocurrency’s meteoric rise. But Gemini’s path has been bumpy, with a struggle to win share in a volatile market pockmarked by lawsuits from New York state and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2023.

Their fortunes revived with the return to the White House of Trump, whose pro-crypto agenda helped the industry rebound from a period of declines and scandals that led to a regulatory crackdown. The SEC’s enforcement action against Gemini was dismissed after a joint request from the two sides in January, following several other abandoned cases the watchdog had pursued against other crypto businesses. Gemini previously reached a settlement with New York.

The twins have donated millions of US dollars to causes supporting US President Donald Trump and the Republican party, including a US$21 million offering in Bitcoin to their own political fundraising group. The latest downturn in Bitcoin’s price has harmed the value of that donation somewhat, wiping about US$5 million off the value as at Dec 31 disclosures.

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As part of the changes announced Thursday, all customer accounts in the UK, EU and Australia will be placed in withdrawal-only mode from Mar 5, with full closures to follow a month later, Gemini said in a support notice to customers earlier on Thursday. Creation of new accounts and all incentive programmes will be disabled for these regions.

Gemini expects its restructuring plan to be substantially completed in the first half of the year, the company said. It is estimated that the move will incur pre-tax restructuring and related charges of approximately US$11 million.

As the crypto downturn worsened, Gemini launched a predictions market in December, tapping into a new, rapidly growing industry at a time when crypto has struggled to compete with broader macro assets for investor attention.

“Our thesis is that prediction markets will be as big or bigger than today’s capital markets,” the Winklevosses said in the blog post. Gemini Predictions has processed more than US$24 million in volume from around 10,000 users since it launched in mid-December, they said.

“Predictions will be the machine within our app to see the future. A truth machine. And in order to have the necessary bandwidth to succeed here, we will narrow our focus,” they said. BLOOMBERG