The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) continues to establish its role in crypto regulation, greenlighting platforms to operate in the country. This time, Gemini crypto platform, founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, scored a license from the CFTC to offer prediction markets to US customers.
The license enables Gemini to operate a Designated Contract Market (DCM) that facilitates the prediction of real events through regulated event-based derivatives contracts.
Winklevoss twins applied for the CFTC license in 2020, and it took nearly 5 years to process the license. For this major milestone, Tyler praised the pro-crypto CFTC Acting Chairman Caroline D. Pham and the Trump administration.
A prediction market is a platform where traders answer a yes/no contract question about a future event, such as a crypto price, a sports event, or an election. With the DCM license, Gemini can offer binary yes/no contracts on actual events, as mentioned above.
What can users expect as Gemini receives CFTC’s Designated Contract Market license?
As Gemini secured the CFTC’s license for a regulated prediction market, it can offer yes/no contracts on real-world events. Gemini designs and shares the contract question on its CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market (DCM).
For instance, a question can be: Will Bitcoin reach $100,000 by the end of 2025? For this contract, Gemini sets tick size, margin rules, and contract size.
When users place buy or sell orders on the yes or no contract, Gemini matches the orders and applies fees on trading volume.
In detail, for the contract — Will Bitcoin reach $100,000 by the end of 2025? — a user can choose Yes, and gets $1 if Bitcoin really surges to $100,000. If a user opts No, they get $1 if the price doesn’t reach the predicted level.
In other words, if the prediction goes correctly, the user receives $1, and if it goes wrong, they get $0. In this way, the price of the contract moves between $0 and $1. Basically, users are trading yes/no contracts where Gemini’s matching engine pairs an order with an opposing order at a specific price.
The platform charges a trading fee when a trade is executed after the matching process.
Besides, CFTC’s license will allow Gemini to access an entire prediction market with entry into crypto futures and options, and perpetual swaps. Gemini can also expand institutional collaboration with market makers, hedge funds, liquidity providers, and data analytics platforms.
Gemini stock price jumps after receiving CFTC license
At the time when Gemini received the CFTC’s DCM license, the firm’s stock shares surged more than 10%. Currently, Gemini is trading at $11.35. However, the price is very far from $45, which is its highest price since it started trading on Nasdaq in September 2025.
Predictions markets are becoming a commonly practiced mechanism in countries like the US. Polymarket, an on-chain prediction market, has already been in the prediction industry, operating contracts/questions related to real-world events. Popular financial service platform, Robinhood (not strictly into crypto), provides event contracts via CFTC-registered exchanges like Kalshi.
