Gemini Retail Spot Volume Drops 14% to $600 Million

By Nathan Brooks

Gemini’s quarterly retail spot trading volume fell 14% to $600 million, its lowest level since Q3 2023, while institutional trading rose 26% to $3.9 billion and lifted total spot volume 18% to $4.5 billion, according to the exchange’s reported figures.

The headline expansion concealed a sharp change in customer mix. Institutional trading produced more than six times the retail volume and more than offset the 14% retail contraction. Gemini said greater institutional activity in Zcash (ZEC) and expanded affiliated market-making supported the increase in total spot volume. The company gave no specific explanation for the retail decrease.

The figures describe transaction flow rather than profitability or liquidity. They do not specify average transaction size, order-book depth or the fee yield attached to each customer category. The defensible conclusion is narrower: institutional execution accounted for nearly seven times the retail activity in the quarter, while the source of the retail weakness remains unexplained.

Revenue follows the volume mix

Exchange revenue increased 7% from the second quarter to $13.4 million as institutional revenue more than doubled. Yet retail traders still accounted for nearly three-quarters of exchange revenue. Gemini therefore has not converted institutional volume into equivalent revenue dominance: retail remained its largest revenue category, while institutional trading supplied the larger share of spot volume.

What does this change for traders and market makers?

For traders, the immediate operating signal is that institutional flow, especially Zcash, exerted greater influence over Gemini’s spot-market activity than retail demand. For market makers, Gemini’s expanded affiliated market-making and rising institutional volume warrant attention when assessing where the exchange is concentrating execution relationships.

Neither metric demonstrates deeper liquidity on its own. The figures describe turnover and customer mix, not bid-ask depth, price improvement or execution quality. A trader should therefore avoid reading the total-volume increase as proof that conditions improved uniformly across every coin, order size or participant group.

Prediction-market activity strengthened beyond the quarter

Gemini generated $796,000 from its prediction-market business in the third quarter, up 52% from the second quarter. Average daily prediction traders in October were about 50% above the third-quarter average. Nearly one-third of new prediction traders were new to Gemini, more than twice the third-quarter share.

Those figures indicate stronger user acquisition after the quarter: revenue grew, participation moved above the quarterly average and newcomers represented a larger share. They do not establish profitability, and October’s user activity should not be treated as a full-quarter revenue result. The more useful operating marker is the combination of higher revenue and a broader funnel rather than either measure in isolation.

Apex proposal would consolidate event-contract routing

Under a proposed deal, Apex futures-brokerage customers’ crypto event contracts would route exclusively through Gemini Titan. The arrangement remains subject to definitive agreements, so it has not begun. If implemented, the structure would give Gemini Titan exclusive routing for that customer segment and make Apex’s distribution a test of whether Gemini can scale event-contract distribution beyond its own user base.

Peer results point in the same direction, on different measures

Coinbase’s consumer spot volume fell 9% from the second quarter to $23.4 billion. Robinhood reported crypto revenue down 55% from a year earlier to $120 million, while event-contract revenue rose sixfold to $173 million.

The figures are not directly comparable. Coinbase reports consumer trading volume, Robinhood reports revenue, and Gemini’s $600 million and $3.9 billion figures represent quarterly spot volume. A direct ranking would conflate turnover with monetization and separate revenue categories.

Taken together, the disclosures show pressure in consumer or retail activity while Gemini’s institutional business and Robinhood’s event-contract revenue grew. The data do not establish a market-wide ranking, but they support a narrower conclusion: growth in newer contract products and institutional channels has not coincided with stronger retail or consumer activity across these platforms.

Gemini was scheduled to hold its third-quarter earnings call Friday, the next scheduled disclosure point. The unresolved issues are whether institutional growth can persist without further retail erosion and whether the Apex proposal is moving toward definitive agreements; until then, headline growth rests on institutional volume rather than a broad recovery in retail participation.