Winklevoss Twins’ Bitcoin Exchange

https://gemini.com/

by wehadfun • 11 years ago

186 87 11 years ago

gemini.com

TomGullen• 11 years ago

Interesting (unfortunate?) time to launch this with the malleability attacks going on.

eterm• 11 years ago

Is this a dank meme based on the fall of mtgox or are there actually malleability attacks going on?

patio11• 11 years ago

The Bitcoin network is presently undergoing a malleability attack designed to cause Bitcoin nodes to run out of memory.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-broke-bitcoin

bko2• 11 years ago

Gemini operates fully in the United States. We work exclusively with American banks; your dollars are eligible for FDIC insurance and never leave the country

Is this just for the cash balance with the exchange or the bitcoin balance as well? I can't imagine it does, but it would be a strong selling point if it did. If its not, its pretty misleading as written.

FDIC insurance covers all types of deposits received at an insured bank, including deposits in a checking account, negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) account, savings account, money market deposit account (MMDA), time deposit such as a certificate of deposit (CD), or an official item issued by a bank, such as a cashier's check or money order.
FDIC insurance covers depositors' accounts at each insured bank, dollar-for-dollar, including principal and any accrued interest through the date of the insured bank's closing, up to the insurance limit.The FDIC does not insure money invested in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, life insurance policies, annuities or municipal securities, even if these investments are purchased at an insured bank.

[0] https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/covered/

ryanworl2• 11 years ago

I think it is written fairly. Bitcoins and not dollars, and the rest of those things you listed that are covered by FDIC insurance are denominated in dollars. If someone (not you specifically) cannot understand the difference between dollars and bitcoins, they shouldn't be trading currencies.

bko2• 11 years ago

Well, some people want exposure to bitcoins without necessarily understanding the block chain, recourse or anything really. That's the whole pitch behind everything the Winklevosses do in this domain. That's why they opened a bitcoin exchange traded fund and that's probably their rationale behind this exchange. Saying that "your dollars are eligible for FDIC insurance and never leave the country" makes someone think that their bitcoin balance is FDIC insured. I wasn't sure at first either and stock exchanges very explicitly state that their products are not FDIC insured and may lose value. Maybe the exchange has a similar disclaimer when you buy bitcoins on the exchange but I still think its a bit misleading to have that basically front and center.

Nothing wrong with wanting to invest in bitcoins without fully understanding them.

gregwtmtno• 11 years ago

Very slick identity verification process.

Instead of requiring a scan of your driver's license or other identifying document, they ask you for questions about your history. I've seen a similar process used at etrade.

knodi123• 11 years ago

It's just a 3rd-party identity verification web service. I've gone through that at a number of sites.

scient2• 11 years ago

It is also fairly easy to spoof, especially given the number of PII leaks in the recent years.

roymurdock2• 11 years ago

What is the difference between this exchange and say, Coinbase, that makes it "next generation"? The website is very light on details.

Caprinicus• 11 years ago

Well for a start coinbase is not an exchange

quotha• 11 years ago

sure it is: https://exchange.coinbase.com/

adam12• 11 years ago

You might want to let coinbase know that.

https://exchange.coinbase.com/

pmorici• 11 years ago

Yeah they are. They wern't originally but they launched 'Coinbase Exchange' a while back and now offer both their traditional broker service as well as Exchange services.

arpit• 11 years ago

From Tyler Winklevoss's answer on the Product Hunt page for Gemini: "Gemini is a New York state limited liability trust company, we did not apply for or have a BitLicense which is a much lower standard. As a limited liability trust company we are a fiduciary, which allows us to accept both individual and institutional customers under New York Banking Law (unlike the BitLicense, which does not convey such fiduciary powers). In short, we can work with both Main Street and Wall Street."

Source: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/gemini-2

roymurdock2• 11 years ago

So the difference is that they're trying to play nice with regulators from day 1, rather than breaking the rules and rolling with the legal punches in order to serve early adopters?

artursapek2• 11 years ago

It's live! You can see there is some activity starting: https://cryptowat.ch/gemini

Also, there was a great post on /r/bitcoinmarkets by the CTO of another exchange, picking apart Gemini's technical setup. Worth a read if you're into modern frontend web development.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/3nkxh3/gemi...

colinplamondon• 11 years ago

I find this kind of analysis way more interesting than highscalability. Different audiences, but these kind of frontend-centric articles are incredibly actionable.

dubcanada• 11 years ago

I'm not sure if 'picking apart Gemini's technical setup' is the right way to describe it, I tend to think of 'picking apart' being negative while the comments are entirely positive.

artursapek2• 11 years ago

I meant it as in he scrutinized it.

SuperKlaus• 11 years ago

He's really just looking at the frontend side of things.

sandGorgon• 11 years ago

interesting... still doesnt talk about the actual API stack though. Conformal is using golang and Coinbase is using Ruby... wonder what these guys are using.

STRML2• 11 years ago

Hey - author of that post here. I can't tell for sure what the stack is by looking at its output, but judging by common experience in the LinkedIn profiles of the engineers, it looks most likely that it's Scala.

scient2• 11 years ago

I would not consider going over their frontend assets and request headers anything close to picking apart their technical setup though. For anyone a little more knowledgeable that post is just a collection of random facts about the apps visible front-end.

STRML2• 11 years ago

Yes, that's true - it was a loosely categorized collection of my thoughts while going through the frontend. The frontend architecture is very similar to that of BitMEX, the exchange that I built, so I am very interested in the choices they've made, why they chose them, and what's different.

Gemini is a spot exchange (simple buy/sell) while we're a derivatives exchange with much more complex requirements, so you'd expect a different set of decisions and tradeoffs, which is what I found. Gemini's real value (at this point) is in its ability to navigate regulatory capture, not necessarily in its technology. But their technology is a cut above what you usually see in Bitcoin exchanges. The exchange landscape has been plagued with unreliable/buggy exchanges, like the late Mt.Gox and the still-limping Bitfinex (which is much more complex).

On the whole, basic spot exchanges without leverage are relatively easy to create. I would love to do a more complete analysis but of course I don't have any inside information. I would be very interested in their backend, which appears to (possibly) be Scala. No clues as to whether they're using a SQL database or something more specialized like KDB+, which we use and love.

dmalvarado• 11 years ago

On an unrelated note, can anyone tell me what that parallaxy, image sliding feature of their website is, so search for it and learn it?

StriverGuy• 11 years ago

I was just going to comment how nice the design is on this page. The parallax is very fluid and I love the 3-D line/polygon thing going on...

hellbanner2• 11 years ago

Start here. http://keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax-websites/ http://keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax-websites/...

.. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=vertical+parralax+css+template

uptown• 11 years ago

Here's a demo and a tutorial: http://callmenick.com/post/simple-parallax-scrolling-effect

jonknee2• 11 years ago

So now when does Mark Zuckerberg launch his Bitcoin exchange?

6stringmerc• 11 years ago

When he moves to a new neighborhood and wants to cloak the source of funds that buy up all the adjacent properties?

jeron• 11 years ago

My bet is that Zuckerberg intends to stay there for the rest of his life.

Not to say that he can't buy other properties (and all their surrounding properties as well)

lingben• 11 years ago

That's why lawyers and LLC's exist.

shostack2• 11 years ago

Did this actually happen?

hellbanner2• 11 years ago

So, Winklevoss + Bitcoins + HN. Who's found vulns?

dabernathy89• 11 years ago

Not operational in Texas yet, apparently.

cmiles74• 11 years ago

Nor in Massachusetts.

clamstew• 11 years ago

Did Uber open source their css?

tetrep• 11 years ago

They have a reassuring security page[0]. It's nice to see they're enforcing good practices, I especially appreciate their "no-link email policy" where they will never send you links in emails, which seems like a great way to head off phishing attempts. I hope they actually present this to users in some way during sign-up though, or it won't be of much help unless a user manually navigates to the security page and reads through most of it.

I'm a little disappointed that they only have level 2[1] HSMs in the cloud, as I would be uncomfortable protecting my hot wallet keys with only tamper evident protections, rather than level 3+ that actually attempt to detect intrusion and delete keys. Bitcoin makes for very quick stealing once you have keys, so reactive defenses against key loss don't help much as you're literally in a race condition with the attacker to empty the wallet (you into a non-compromised one, the attacker into their own). But I would assume they weighed cost/risk and I've never heard of a security compromise of Amazon's HSMs so it was probably a reasonable choice.

edit: I should also applaud their use of PGP and (explicit) respect for responsible disclosure.

[0] https://exchange.gemini.com/security

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140-2#Level_2

dtwhitney• 11 years ago

I personally know many of the engineers at Gemini and have worked with some of them in the recent past. If I were going to choose a team to build a bitcoin exchange, the people I know at Gemini would be on it. If you're into bitcoin, I think this is the place to put your money.

cenal• 11 years ago

What benefit do they offer over something like Coinbase to a casual Bitcoin observer like me?

benmmurphy4• 11 years ago

I don't understand Amazon's cloud HSM product. Amazon says they don't have access to your HSM but presumably they do if they wanted to. Also, how does HSM protect the hot wallet if an attacker is able to get access to a machine that is using the HSM for signing? Your only hope is that you can obscure the credentials for the HSM from the attacker.

HSM for the hot wallet probably provides greater security than no HSM for the hot wallet but I don't think it gives you that much extra security.

ecdavis3• 11 years ago

The value proposition of an HSM is that sensitive key material never leaves the hardware in plaintext (or at all, in the case of the SafeNet HSMs used by Amazon). An attacker who compromises a machine with access to the HSM is therefore able to perform whatever operations that machine is authorized to perform, but nothing more. Crucially, they cannot steal the key material and then go off and use it elsewhere. They have to stay connected to the machine that has the access they need. Protecting against offline attacks is a pretty big gain.

Amazon says they don't have access to your HSM but presumably they do if they wanted to.

I wouldn't be so sure. As far as I can tell, once you've provisioned an HSM from Amazon you have full administrator access. That includes control over all trusted SSH certs, users, etc. Of course Amazon has physical access, but that doesn't give them access to the HSM's crypto functions or the key material.

Demeisen• 11 years ago

How does this not create a conflicting trademark with ISE Gemini?

howdoipython• 11 years ago

What is the best way to get bitcoin without associating it with your identity (credit cards, debt cards, etc).

Accepting pre-paid cards is fine too

2mur• 11 years ago

Localbitcoin has sellers who accept cash-purchased gift card codes. You're going to pay above market rate.

kordless• 11 years ago

Go to a local bitcoin meetup. There will usually be someone there willing to do a trade. Bring cash.

yc1010• 11 years ago

On localbitcoins.com or paxful.com you can buy bitcoin with prepaid vouchers, prepare to lose 20% for keeping your identity secure.

pnathan• 11 years ago

Nifty. I think this is the first BTC operation I've seen where words like "compliance" are used in a serious fashion, and a direct aim at institutional investors is presented. Institutional investors are Very Serious Business, so it should be a fun ride.

I'm still holding out for a BTC ETF. :-)

lemiffe• 11 years ago

What a beautiful, fast website.

smoreilly• 11 years ago

Honestly when banks have crappy websites it makes me really feel like the engineers doing the backend work are terrible. I know this is a horrible bias but still if you can't spend the time to make a good website who says they didn't cut corners on security?

Zelphyr• 11 years ago

A local Credit Union had CAPTCHA's like, "4n1m4l" and (believe it or not) "b4nK3r". When I complained they snidely remarked that they were pretty sure they knew how to handle security.

That may be, but they no longer have my money.

Though, for what its worth, the biggest reason I left them is because they wanted to charge me a fee to deposit cash that my kids had saved up. "Because that's what Loomis Fargo charges us." So? Cost of doing business.

The irony that they were CHARGING ME TO GIVE THEM MONEY was completely lost on that particular teller.

heyheyhey• 11 years ago

This guy looks into the front-end stack

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/3nkxh3/gemi...

stevenh• 11 years ago

It was incredibly slow here. The tab locked up the entire browser for a full 7 seconds before I could begin scrolling. The rendering frame rate of scrolling was 3-4 FPS, and only jumped back up to a fluid rate once I scrolled down past all of the images. Late 2013 MacBook Pro running Chrome.

joshu• 11 years ago

ha, "gemini", get it?

colordrops• 11 years ago

No, what's the joke?

kylecrum• 11 years ago

Gemini = Twins. The Winklevoss brothers are twins.

cpwright• 11 years ago

Seems like a bad choice to me given that ISE already has an Options exchange called Gemini.

bduerst3• 11 years ago

Kind of annoying that they try to push the Authy app install first, then let you authenticate without it.

Love the interface, but would even greater if they would let you short somehow.

teekert• 11 years ago

"Thank you! We will notify you when Gemini has launched in Netherlands."

Bleh.

bitJericho• 11 years ago

This is the perfect opportunity to hawk my own exchange because we should all have alternatives. http://bitcoinsexchange.itmustbetrue.com

chillwaves• 11 years ago

Why would anyone want to have a sex change for their bit coins?

Winklevoss Twins’ Bitcoin Exchange

Related Stories