By
Steve Muchoki
April 9th, 2024
Gemini, the Winklevoss brother owned cryptocurrency company, has recently applied for a FINRA broker-dealer license. This is a healthy step towards allowing their customers to lawfully swap digital securities.
Just recently, Winklevoss brother owned cryptocurrency company Gemini, revealed that they are applying for a broker-dealer license granted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Previously, Gemini partnered with Harbor, a tokenized securities platform. This partnership allows institutional investors to purchase securities with Gemini’s own stablecoin – Gemini Dollar (GUSD). Also, this allows investors to receive dollar-denominated dividends via GUSD. This application for a broker-dealer license indicates that they are also willing to offer trading of such securities on their platform.
“The [Gemini] team is very easy to work with and we are aligned in terms of taking a proactive regulatory approach and addressing the needs of the institutional players in the market,” said Harbor’s marketing lead Kevin Young.
The CEO of Harbor, Joshua Stein, earlier this year in February, was still convinced that brokers, family offices, and investment banks are still interested in tokens. How much of that is changed now is not clear, but they are still interested even despite the market frenzy which occurred in 2017.
However, since new crypto exchange regulations came out of the recent G20 summit, this could only raise the interest of potential token investors.
From Harbor to Gemini
Some experts, familiar with the matter, say that the ultimate plan is to permit securities such external platforms like Harbor, and to eventually trade on Gemini. However, to get there, Gemini needs to get all the necessary approvals, and that could take time.
So far, FINRA has been very slow in confirming these applications. First of all, it is interesting that it is a self-regulatory organization, and up until now, it is reported that they are “sitting” on around 40 applications. There are even companies that are waiting for as long as 14 months to get an approval. So the only thing that Gemini along with Winklevoss brothers can do is to wait. Only time will tell if Gemini will become a trading platform.
However, in 2015, Gemini received an approval from the NYDFS (New York Department of Financial Services) to custody digital assets on a qualified state level. Would this be interpreted as an advantage by the FINRA?