As bitcoin and ether prices scale in drastic ways, cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, founded by the Winklevoss brothers is now expanding to the UK as a part of a wider expansion plan.

Starting today, the Gemini bitcoin and digital assets exchange opens in the United Kingdom, enabling registered users in the region to trade bitcoin and ether.

The New York-based bitcoin exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss will commence operations in the UK today, continuing an international expansion program that recently saw the exchange open in Canada.

As things stand, registered users will be able to trade the two reigning cryptocurrencies on the ETH/BTC order book, essentially trading the two with each other.

In an announcement today, Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder and president at Gemini revealed that UK customers will soon be able to access its USD order books.

This would allow users to buy BTC with USD or ETH, and sell BTC for USD or ETH; buy ETH with USD or BTC, and sell ETH for USD or BTC.

Gemini’s expansion to the UK is likely to be one of many moves across the Atlantic for the New York-based exchange.

“We know there’s been a lot of demand for our services in the UK, we know there’s a strong desire, New York and London are financial capitals of the world and speak the same language,” Tyler Winklevoss told the Telegraph.

As a relatively new exchange, trading in Gemini is comparatively low to the likes of major Chinese exchanges among other established exchanges around the world. Still, Tyler Winklevoss insists that the exchange is only getting started. Speaking to CNBC, he stated:

Our onboarding queue is huge, it’s continued to grow … we have only been operational for about eight months now … each month has increased growth better than the next. This month we are already on track to do … a trading volume of around $100 million of U.S. dollar notional value of both bitcoin and ether.

Bitcoin & Ether

Bitcoin price has seen a rapid resurgence in recent times with investors flocking to the cryptocurrency to see it as a store of value. The Winklevoss twins opined in a recent interview that bitcoin was “better at being gold than gold” as a safe haven and an entity with better money characteristics. Tyler Winklevoss sees further room for bitcoin price to appreciate and grow, comparing it directly to gold. He stated:

If we look at the overall market cap of bitcoin … if it is really a gold 2.0 … then the market cap is actually quite small and there is potential for a lot more increase in the price because you look at gold and the market cap is trillions of dollars.

The Gemini bitcoin exchange launched in October 2015 in New York and added Ethereum’s token ether to its stable of supported cryptocurrencies in May this year. It gained approval from the Department of Financial Services in the state to become the first “licensed ether exchange” in the world. The exchange was already operating under the regulation of a fiduciary, enabling the exchange to offer services to individual and institutional clients without the need for the much-debated BitLicense.

Tyler Winklevoss sees contrasting tones with the two premier cryptocurrencies, telling the Wall Street Journal that they “serve different purposes.”

His makes the following distinction between the two:

The way we view bitcoin, it’s a better [version of] gold. The way we view Ethereum, it’s the world largest virtual computer.

Featured image from Shutterstock.