Cameron Winklevoss, left, and Tyler Winklevoss
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, relies on Dogecoin.
Starting Sunday, customers with the Gemini app can move their stocks of Dogecoin to interest-bearing accounts via the Gemini earn service.
The company says it will offer a 2.25 percent APY (Annual Percentage Return) rate on a customer’s unused Dogecoin balance.
Interest is earned and compounded daily, and customers can redeem their crypto at any time. There are also no minimum balance or fees that can be transferred to or redeemed from Gemini Earn.
Gemini’s move to add Dogecoin to its savings program comes less than a week after the exchange first listed the eight-year-old cryptocurrency.
“At Gemini, we believe that one of the most exciting things about cryptocurrency … is empowering the individual, and Dogen is a phenomenal example of that,” Gemini COO Noah Perlman told CNBC in an interview.
The meme-inspired cryptocurrency has caught the world’s attention and is up more than 25,000 percent in the past six months.
“The individual feels that Doge is money? Then it is. We are here to help individuals buy, store, and spend it safely,” Perlman continued.
Since Gemini Earn launched in February, customers have now collectively earned interest on more than $ 2 billion in loans made through the service.
Customers in the US and Singapore can earn up to 7.4 percent APY with 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.
“If you compare the prices we offer to what you can get in a traditional money market or a CD, it’s up to 100 times more,” said Perlman.
Although Peter Thiel-backed crypto lender BlockFi offers interest rates of up to 8.6 percent APY on crypto deposits, and cryptocurrency exchange Binance says customers can earn up to 20 percent APY through its platform, Gemini remains the only regulated exchange in the USA, where you can trade Dogecoin and earn interest in all 50 states.
This is proving particularly important in a place like New York, where, for example, the state has denied BlockFi the right to offer interest accounts.
