Gemini Space Station has lost roughly 80% of its stock-market value since going public, reviving a question that has followed the Winklevoss-founded crypto platform for months: could the company ultimately be worth more to a buyer than it is as a standalone exchange?
Gemini priced its September 2025 initial public offering at $28 per share. GEMI closed at $5.81 on September 18, 2026, leaving the stock about 79% below its IPO price even after jumping more than 31% during the latest session. Its market capitalization stood at roughly $753 million, compared with about $3.33 billion at its public debut and close to $4 billion around its early peak.
No takeover has been announced, and there is no indication that Gemini is currently negotiating a full-company sale. But the valuation collapse has made an earlier acquisition thesis look considerably more relevant.
Lorenzo Valente, director of digital assets research at ARK Invest, argued publicly in August that Hyperliquid should acquire Gemini and use the company as a regulated U.S. gateway for perpetual futures and prediction markets.
The idea remains Valente’s proposal, not evidence of an active Hyperliquid bid. Still, it highlights an increasingly important distinction in Gemini’s valuation: its spot-exchange business is shrinking, while the collection of regulatory licenses, clearing infrastructure, custody capabilities and customer relationships surrounding that exchange may be much harder for another company to reproduce.
Gemini’s Exchange Business Is Shrinking Fast
The pressure on the traditional exchange business is visible in Gemini’s second-quarter results.
Exchange revenue fell 38% year over year to $12.5 million, while total trading volume dropped to $3.8 billion from $11.3 billion a year earlier. Assets on the platform declined to $8.4 billion from $18.2 billion, with Gemini attributing the fall partly to lower crypto valuations and institutional custody outflows.
The company is still attracting users. Monthly transacting users rose 11% year over year to 580,000. But the economics are increasingly coming from outside conventional spot trading.
Total revenue actually increased 37% to $45.5 million in the quarter because services revenue surged 149% to $23.5 million. Gemini has been expanding into credit cards, equities, prediction markets, OTC trading and derivatives infrastructure as it tries to reduce its dependence on crypto trading volumes.
That broader strategy reflects a shift happening across the industry. Coinbase has been aggressively expanding prediction markets, while other crypto platforms are increasingly mixing digital assets with products traditionally associated with brokers and exchanges.
Binance, for example, has moved deeper into U.S. stocks and ETFs, illustrating how quickly the boundary between a crypto exchange and a broader financial platform is disappearing.
The Regulatory Stack May Be Gemini’s Most Valuable Asset
Gemini’s strongest acquisition argument is not necessarily its trading technology.
It is regulatory infrastructure.
Gemini Trust Company has operated under a New York Department of Financial Services limited-purpose trust charter since 2015. Gemini also maintains state money-transmission permissions and federal registrations supporting its crypto and custody operations.
Its derivatives footprint has expanded significantly over the past year.
Gemini Titan received Designated Contract Market status from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in December 2025, giving the company a federally regulated exchange for prediction markets and other potential derivatives products.
Gemini Olympus then received a CFTC Derivatives Clearing Organization license in April 2026. The clearinghouse went live in August, allowing Gemini to bring clearing and settlement of its prediction contracts in-house.
The company has explicitly said the DCM and DCO combination could ultimately support crypto futures, options and perpetual futures for U.S. customers.
That matters because acquiring regulated derivatives infrastructure has already become a major strategic theme. Kraken parent Payward agreed to pay up to $550 million for Bitnomial, gaining a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse rather than trying to recreate that regulatory stack from scratch. Kraken is now using that infrastructure as it reorganizes its U.S. perpetual-futures business.
Gemini also has securities infrastructure. Its broker-dealer registration has been adapted to support its U.S. stock-trading product, with Apex handling custody, execution and clearing.
For a buyer trying to build a U.S. platform spanning crypto, equities, predictions and derivatives, assembling those permissions organically could take years.
Why Hyperliquid Entered the Takeover Conversation
Hyperliquid is an obvious name to enter the discussion because perpetual futures are already central to its business.
The decentralized derivatives platform has grown into a venue capable of handling enormous positions. Dave Finances recently tracked a Hyperliquid short book approaching $1 billion from Abraxas Capital alone, demonstrating how far the platform has moved beyond small retail speculation.
Hyperliquid has also become relevant to U.S. market structure. Payward has proposed using Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 infrastructure to support regulated perpetual markets through Bitnomial, combining blockchain-based trading infrastructure with conventional U.S. clearing and customer-account controls.
The platform is simultaneously attracting regulatory attention simply because of its scale. A recent federal insider-trading case involving former Robinhood employees centered on alleged trades in Hyperliquid perpetuals, underscoring how its markets increasingly intersect with mainstream U.S. financial enforcement.
Valente’s thesis is therefore straightforward: instead of Hyperliquid waiting for U.S. regulated companies to build integrations around its infrastructure, it could theoretically acquire an existing regulated operator.
Gemini would bring custody, customers, fiat rails, securities infrastructure, prediction markets and regulated derivatives entities. Hyperliquid would bring crypto-native trading infrastructure, liquidity and a large perpetual-futures ecosystem.
That is strategically interesting.
It is still entirely hypothetical.
The Winklevoss Twins Make a Deal Easier — and Harder
Gemini’s corporate structure creates an unusual M&A dynamic.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss effectively control 94.5% of Gemini’s total voting power through Class B shares carrying 10 votes each.
That concentration could simplify negotiations because a potential buyer would not need to win support from a fragmented shareholder base or fight a prolonged activist campaign.
But the same structure means outside shareholders have almost no ability to force a transaction.
A hostile takeover is essentially unrealistic without the brothers’ cooperation. The lower Gemini’s valuation falls, the more attractive its regulatory assets may look to outsiders, but the market cannot compel the founders to sell simply because investors believe an acquisition would unlock more value.
That is particularly important given Gemini’s history. The company has spent more than a decade emphasizing regulatory approval and compliance as strategic assets rather than administrative overhead.
Gemini Has Already Attracted Interest in Pieces of the Business
The takeover discussion did not begin with Hyperliquid.
CoinDesk reported in April that prospective buyers had considered acquiring parts of Gemini’s shuttered European and U.K. operations, with regulatory licenses seen as a central attraction. No transaction emerged, and Gemini has not announced a sale of those businesses.
The report nevertheless fits a broader crypto M&A pattern.
Keyrock acquired BlockFills’ institutional trading and brokerage assets in July, adding client relationships, derivatives expertise and regulatory entities. Tokenization company Ondo has separately explored a transaction potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The lesson is increasingly clear: crypto acquisitions are not always about buying the exchange with the largest trading volume.
They can be about buying permission to operate.
The Acquisition Case Is Stronger Than the Standalone Numbers — but There Is a Catch
This is where Gemini becomes an unusual investment story.
The company generated $45.5 million of revenue in the second quarter but still reported a net loss of $107.7 million and adjusted EBITDA of negative $74 million. Cash and cash equivalents had fallen to $188.6 million.
A buyer would therefore not simply be acquiring licenses and customers. It would also inherit a business that still needs substantial cost discipline and stronger monetization.
Gemini is trying to solve that problem itself by becoming a financial super app. It launched U.S. stock trading in July, expanded to 24/5 equity trading in August and continues to invest in prediction markets and derivatives.
That strategy mirrors the broader push by exchanges to export crypto-style products into traditional finance. Bybit, for example, has been expanding traditional-asset perpetual futures, while U.S. platforms are simultaneously trying to bring regulated versions of similar products onshore.
If Gemini can make its regulatory infrastructure generate meaningful revenue itself, the acquisition argument becomes less urgent.
If spot trading continues shrinking while losses remain large, the opposite happens: the gap between the value of Gemini’s operating business and the strategic value of its licenses becomes harder to ignore.
At roughly $753 million, Gemini is no longer being valued like the high-growth crypto exchange investors expected at the IPO.
It is increasingly being valued like a collection of financial infrastructure assets with a struggling exchange attached.
That does not mean Hyperliquid, or anyone else, will buy it.
But it explains why the takeover question keeps returning. Gemini spent years accumulating regulatory permissions that are expensive, slow and difficult to replicate. As the stock price falls, those permissions do not disappear.
The real acquisition question is therefore no longer simply whether Gemini is cheap.
It is whether Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss believe the company’s licenses, customers and infrastructure are worth more in their own long-term strategy than a potential buyer would be willing to pay for them today.
Michael Lebowitz is a financial markets analyst and digital finance writer specializing in cryptocurrencies, blockchain ecosystems, prediction markets, and emerging fintech platforms. He began his career as a forex and equities trader, developing a deep understanding of market dynamics, risk cycles, and capital flows across traditional financial markets.
In 2013, Michael transitioned his focus to cryptocurrencies, recognizing early the structural similarities—and critical differences—between legacy markets and blockchain-based financial systems. Since then, his work has concentrated on crypto-native market behavior, including memecoin cycles, on-chain activity, liquidity mechanics, and the role of prediction markets in pricing political, economic, and technological outcomes.
Alongside digital assets, Michael continues to follow developments in online trading and financial technology, particularly where traditional market infrastructure intersects with decentralized systems. His analysis emphasizes incentive design, trader psychology, and market structure rather than short-term price action, helping readers better understand how speculative narratives form, evolve, and unwind in fast-moving crypto markets.
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