Cameron Winklevoss, left, and Tyler Winklevoss
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, is going all in on dogecoin.
Starting Sunday, the Gemini app will let clients move their holdings in dogecoin into interest-bearing accounts through its Gemini Earn service.
The company says it will offer a rate of 2.25 percent APY (annual percentage yield) on a customer’s idle dogecoin balances.
Interest is earned and compounded daily, and customers can redeem their crypto at any time. There are also no minimum balances and no fees to transfer into or redeem from Gemini Earn.
The move by Gemini to add dogecoin to its savings program comes less than a week after the exchange listed the eight-year-old cryptocurrency for the first time.
“We at Gemini believe that one of the most exciting things about cryptocurrency…is empowering the individual, and doge is a phenomenal example of that,” Noah Perlman, Gemini’s COO told CNBC in an interview.
The meme-inspired cryptocurrency has captured the world’s attention, surging more than 25,000 percent in the last six months.
“The individual feels like doge is money? Then it is. We’re here to help individuals acquire it, store it, and spend it in a safe, secure way,” continued Perlman.
Since Gemini Earn launched in February, customers are now collectively earning interest on more than $2 billion in loans originated through the service.
Customers in the U.S. and Singapore can earn up to 7.4 percent APY on 32 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, and the newly-added injective, polygon, and SushiSwap.
The company soon plans to offer interest on its dollar-pegged stablecoin, the Gemini dollar.
“When you compare the rates that we’re offering to what you can get in a traditional money market or CD, it’s up to 100 times more,” said Perlman.
Though the Peter Thiel-backed crypto lender BlockFi offers rates of up to 8.6 percent APY on crypto deposits, and cryptocurrency exchange Binance says clients can earn up to 20 percent APY through its platform, Gemini says it remains the only regulated exchange in the U.S. where you can trade and earn interest on dogecoin in all 50 states.
This proves to be especially vital in a place like New York, where, for example, the state has denied BlockFi the right to offer interest accounts.
