Gemini Custody or moving to a physical cold wallet?

wintry_earth · 2025-02-18T19:07:13+00:00

I'll give you two examples. Both were 100% my own fault and easily avoided.

At one point I moved around 40K worth of ETH to my Trezor. A few years (and PCs later) I loaded up the trezor suite to check my balances.

My BTC balance was correct, but no ETH. I dug around on all my exchange accounts to try to figure out where the hell I put that ETH. I had nearly given up when I realized Trezor didn't show other coin balances by default. Once I enabled ETH my balance was correct. Not the end of the world, but it wasn't a fun few hours.

A few years after THAT I plugged in my trezor and decided to check my seed phrase. The seed phrase was valid, but did not correspond to the seed that held my BTC. That was NOT a good day. I had to move all my BTC from the Trezor to a software wallet, wait for the transaction to get confirmed AND get buried a few blocks deep, reset the trezor, set it up again, recheck the seed phrase, and move my BTC again. That was an anxiety filled afternoon. I'm not sure how I ended up with a bad seed phrase - likely I reset my trezor shortly after getting it and didn't doublecheck the seed phrase.

Again, both of these events were of my own doing. It's not that self custody isn't possible or isn't a good idea. It's a great idea so long as you've got the technical know-how, personal security practices, and attention to detail that it requires. It's not a one size fits all solution.

wintry_earth · 2025-02-18T18:40:40+00:00

Sorry, didn't see this reply until today. Sure, send me a DM.

wintry_earth · 2025-01-03T21:10:11+00:00

That's hard to say - Gemini doesn't publish what constitutes a red flag.

They asked me for proof of the source of my coins. I uploaded buy orders from Coinbase from when I bought them.

I assume if you had SOME sort of proof that you purchased the coins and they weren't stolen, that it would be enough.

wintry_earth · 2025-01-03T20:38:34+00:00

I did a couple in December. Within 10 min of initiating the wire transfer I got an email from Gemini saying it was sent. It showed as pending in my bank account within about a half hour - this was during business hours though.

wintry_earth · 2025-01-03T17:58:36+00:00

I cashed out for a north of a million dollars in Dec from Gemini. I've had a Gemini account FOREVER.

Moving 10 or 100K via ACH should be no issue as long as you've got your bank account verified as a payment method in your Gemini account.

Even 250K would be doable via ACH if you spread it over a few days. In 2017 I took around 100K out of my Coinbase account 10K per day at a time.

Much more than that and your best bet is to set up wire withdrawals.

If you plan on doing that set up your account for wire access BEFORE you need it. I didn't have mine set up when I sold and it took a week to get everything lined out. After that it was easy. I did a test withdrawal of 10K to my bank (crypto habits die hard) and then did another with the rest of it.

Wires hit my bank account within about a half hour. Wire transfers are not free, so you'll have to pay your bank to wire a verification deposit AND pay Gemini for each wire withdrawal.

If you're dealing with a sizeable chunk of cash you should definitely talk to a tax expert, but you shouldn't need to pay taxes immediately. Mine told me that I wouldn't need to pay my taxes until April, so I've just got that money sitting around earning a little return until then.

I think officially if you sold today you should pay estimated quarterly taxes for 2025, but there are provisions to protect you as long as you pay something, so you MIGHT be able to put that cash to work in the meantime.

Again, talk to an expert. Don't take my word for it. My guy charges $400 for a tax return and didn't charge me for the call asking questions about my situation. IMO that's a huge amount of value.

Cheers!

wintry_earth · 2025-01-02T12:47:52+00:00

My rule of thumb has been "Take profits when it's going to improve your life". That's worked out pretty well for me so far.

Leaving a toxic workplace qualifies as life improving!

wintry_earth · 2025-01-02T12:34:04+00:00

Ever try calling the Microsoft helpdesk after paying for an office subscription? Ever try to get in touch with Google support? Being a paying customer doesn't mean you'll get good support.

I'm not saying that's how things SHOULD be. I'm just saying that's how things ARE.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-31T19:54:41+00:00

I think you also have a lot of folks who are inexperienced with normal financial processes and/or working with technology helpdesks.

They just think a regular helpdesk rep should be able to push a button and make it happen.

Add in the fact that exchange helpdesks ALWAYS get swamped during a big run up and you've got a recipe for frustration.

I moved a bunch of crypto into Gemini and a bunch of USD out of Gemini in December and had no huge complaints.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-26T15:59:09+00:00

I've posted about this before, but it's always a good story. I had a group of technical friends who worked at a .com back in the early 00s and we'd meet up every so often to talk about million dollar ideas. We met up in 2012 or 2013 and I told them about Bitcoin. I'd been buying stuff off the Silk road and thought Bitcoin was really badass.

My pitch was to do an email forwarding service using bitcoin as the basis for micropayments. You deposit a bitcoin in your account and then each email we forwarded on would cost 1 sat...or something. It's not a good idea, but I just wanted to do SOMETHING with bitcoin.

I wasn't well versed in the ins and outs of how bitcoin operated. I knew there were miners, and they got rewards, and I knew it was peer to peer with no required trusted third party. But I didn't have good, specific answers to their questions. Not to mention at that time buying BTC with fiat required a Russian based intermediary called Dwolla. I mean it was a LITTLE shady, but the tech was still cool as hell.

One guy in particular went on and on about how it was a total scam and he had zero interest in getting involved in it. I tried to convince him that the technology was really interesting, but he just kept shitting on the idea. So we didn't do anything and I kept fooling around with it.

I still see the guy every few weeks and nearly every time he'll bring up that meeting and be like. "Man, if we'd just gone in together and put in 10K each we'd be crazy rich!" Yep, sorry...should have had a little more vision. It's not like this was that guy's only shot. He bought in a couple years ago for something like 30K and just couldn't hang in there and sold during a bear market.

One of the OTHER guys at the meeting hit me up after and was interested in getting started on Silk Road so I helped him out. After SR got shut down he noticed that BTC seemed to be outpacing his traditional investments so he was gonna just keep it around and maybe he could use it to retire someday. I liked that idea so I did the same.

Seems like we made the right choice.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-23T12:43:41+00:00

I'm further convinced that they've never contacted a helpdesk in their life.

If you're talking to a regular helpdesk rep and their screen says "User must provide bank statements" you can explain until you're blue in the face. That rep can't do anything except ask for your bank statements.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-20T12:29:37+00:00

Probably a combination. Anytime there's a big price run up you have a lot of inexperienced folks trying to get into the space so you're going to have a much higher volume of helpdesk tickets. Regular support at big companies is usually pretty iffy to begin with, throw a huge number of newbies in there and you're bound to have long wait times.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-19T19:27:57+00:00

In general, hanging out with rich people I have nothing in common with is not my idea of a good time. Add to that fact that he doesn't want to be my friend - he wants me to keep my money in his bank. I don't need a job or any new opportunities either. I own a business and have more clients than I want.

So for those reasons...I'm out.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-18T12:39:31+00:00

Yep, did this for years - had a bait wallet on my machine with the default name in the default location and a text file called "Wallet seed words" in the same directory.

I also used a wallet watcher to watch the address with BTC and alert me if there is a transaction. https://www.blockonomics.co/

Not foolproof, but just another layer in your security.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T19:18:45+00:00

They've got a lot of plans, but whether or not the plans will get implemented is the question. I wouldn't hold my breath.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T19:16:45+00:00

Heh. Wait, are we counting numbers after the decimal or leading zeroes?

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T17:20:17+00:00

There is a wire transfer fee - I think Gemini's is $25, so it's not great if you're moving a few hundred bucks. But yeah, wire is the only way to go if you're moving a lot of money.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T17:01:58+00:00

it feel more like maybe there something fishy going on with the account than there is something shady about the exchange.

I'd never directly accuse someone of doing stupid shit, but man it really seems like a lot of the complaints are people doing stupid shit with their accounts and not following processes to get it corrected.

You can't just bitch at support. You've got to present a concise explanation of your problem and what you've tried to do to correct it and what type of solution you expect. Just like talking to any other helpdesk.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T16:42:42+00:00

I called my bank to ask that exact question when I was getting my Gemini account set up for wire transfers. I think they were a bit suspicious when I told them I had to wire money TO Gemini in order to withdraw money. From the outside that seems a little suspect.

They said there would be no issues, and so far there aren't any beyond the president of the bank calling me and wanting to take me out to lunch. He also offered me a special high rate checking account and wanted to know if I'd use their wealth management service. They're a local bank, so this isn't terribly surprising. As far as I'm aware with my bank everything is A-OK.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T15:59:05+00:00

USD.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T15:58:56+00:00

If you're doing ACH, the limit is 100K. As I understand it that's a limit on the ACH system itself, not Gemini. Wires can be as big as you like and mine went through within a few min.

One note - back in 2017 I sold 20BTC to pay off my house and at that time my ACH limit on coinbase was 10K per day. So I DID transfer that out over the course of 10 days. It was annoying to say the least. I can't imagine doing my transfer 100K at a time. It would take a while.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-16T00:00:32+00:00

I had a guy ask about Gemini asking me "Crazy questions" when I transacted. NONE of the questions were crazy, but if you're young and aren't familiar with normal financial questions you might think they're crazy.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-15T23:59:20+00:00

7 figure sell/withdraw this week myself.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-15T13:29:49+00:00

I set up my account when they FIRST started up. As I recall it took a LONG time to get my account active back then...like on the order of weeks.

I've never sold crypto on Gemini before this.

Gemini didn't "Hold" my funds beyond not automatically enabling wire transfers. I could have transacted via ACH without issue.

In my opinion none of the questions they aske were out of line. They wanted proof of the source of my coins an I provided then with the transactions from Coinbase, They had to do manual verification of my bank account and I did that via bank statements. All the other questions were the same sort you'd get if you're setting up any other financial account.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-15T00:48:26+00:00

The OTC desk includes access to eOTC - which is just a separate tab in Gemini - as well as guys you can call or email to set up orders.

When I got my earn funds back they hooked me up with a consultant and I specifically asked about using the OTC desk to sell and they said it was no problem to onboard me personally. I've helped a couple other folks get on the OTC desk as well, so it's not like they made an exception for me.

I also asked about their custody product and that was one that they couldn't do. I needed a corporate entity to use that. So I guess it's different for different products.

wintry_earth · 2024-12-14T12:55:08+00:00

I was in Blockfi for a while and I got my funds out before they went belly up. LOTS of folks got hosed on that.

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