Gemini's After-Hours Moon Mission: Trading Fees for Fortune-Telling Fees

Gemini's stock decided to do a little after-hours pumping on Thursday, climbing roughly 7% to $6.45 after the bell rang at $6.01. This wasn't your standard "BTC up 5%" sympathy pump; the smart money is apparently cheering the exchange's plot to find revenue streams that don't require praying for a bull market.

Q4 trading volume cooled off to $11.5 billion—a 30% dip from the prior quarter as the entire crypto ecosystem collectively hit the snooze button. Somehow, transaction revenue managed to stay roughly flat, a magic trick performed by tweaking fee structures and convincing more degens to use fancy, premium order types.

The real plot twist? Revenue from services and interest finally lapped transaction revenue for the first time ever. Services revenue shot up 33% quarter-over-quarter to $26.5 million, fueled largely by a credit-card business that's growing faster than a memecoin rumor and users who are actually sticking around. For the full year, services revenue more than doubled, helping total revenue climb 26% to $179.6 million.

Of course, this top-line growth came with a classic crypto-adjacent accessory: a net loss of $582.8 million for 2025. Ouch.

The firm's big bet is that prediction markets will be its volatility life-raft. After bagging a Designated Contract Market license from the CFTC, Gemini flipped the switch on a regulated prediction-markets platform in December. Over 15,000 users have already been gambling—sorry, trading contracts—on everything from crypto prices to political dramas and sports. They've even filed to operate a derivatives exchange called "Gemini Titan," basically building a revenue engine they hope runs on something other than hopium.

Speaking of plastic, Gemini's credit-card game is scaling like a proper Layer 2. Transaction volume blew past $1.2 billion in 2025, with revenue from that line looking sharply up and to the right year-over-year.

On the cost side, Gemini did the classic "restructuring" tango, cutting about 30% of its workforce and pulling out of several international markets like the UK, EU, and Australia to go all-in on the U.S. The management thesis is that this corporate diet will slash expenses and fast-track profitability, assuming the new products can keep users engaged.

This pivot isn't all sunshine and rainbows, however. Gemini is currently facing a class-action lawsuit that alleges it played a little hide-the-ball, omitting its prediction-market plans from its IPO filings. Whoops.

Despite the legal side-quest, the market seems to be giving the strategy shift a cautious nod. Investors are apparently betting that a diversified revenue mix and some shiny new product lines might just make the company less dependent on the crypto-trading rollercoaster—a ride known for its violent dips.