Gemini has reportedly sold its UK and European operations to KAST, a Singapore company that sells stablecoin accounts and payment cards, for less than $10 million, CoinDesk reported on Thursday 12 November. The price comes from one person familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously. Neither company has confirmed the sale: Gemini declined to comment, and a KAST spokesperson would not discuss it. No regulator has announced an approval, and nothing published so far says the deal has closed.
What is on the record points to a transaction still in progress. A KAST job advert, no longer on the company’s careers page but still readable on the job board web3.career, describes “the acquired UK and EU entities” and asks its future European general manager to drive the “Change of Control” and re-authorisation processes. In regulated finance, those are the steps a buyer has to clear before it can run a licensed firm it has agreed to buy.
Gemini, the Nasdaq-listed exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, abandoned its European push in February, and the reported deal would close that chapter. KAST would gain a route into European licences that no newcomer can obtain quickly. Former Gemini customers in the UK and the EU gain or lose little either way, because their accounts were already shut or being wound down. Our Gemini exchange review covers what the platform still offers in the US.
What CoinDesk reported about the Gemini Europe sale
According to CoinDesk, Gemini Space Station (ticker GEMI) sold the units to KAST for under $10 million. The KAST spokesperson did not deny the report. “We are actively in the market for M&A, as our revenue and footprint grows,” the spokesperson told the outlet.
Several other crypto news sites ran the story on Thursday morning, but all of them cite CoinDesk. At noon UTC there was still no second outlet with its own sources, no press release from either company and no filing at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gemini’s latest filings on EDGAR date from 14 October, and a full-text search of its filings returns no mention of KAST.
Gemini reports its third-quarter results after the US market closes on Thursday (from 21:00 UTC), with an earnings call on Friday 13 November at 8:30 a.m. New York time (13:30 UTC). Its last quarterly report, covering the period to 30 June, made no mention of a sale.
KAST’s own job advert describes the deal
The most detailed public trace of the deal comes from KAST itself. A listing for a “Web3 General Manager (Europe)”, based in Dublin, appears on the job board web3.career, where it was marked as posted about two months ago. CoinDesk dates the advert to about a month before its report. The role is no longer among the 13 openings on KAST’s own careers page, which on Thursday included two legal counsel posts, a risk and audit lead and a KYC product manager, all in London.
The Dublin listing is unusually specific. The new manager would:
- lead the integration of “the acquired UK and EU entities”;
- manage the move of Gemini’s UK and EU team members to KAST;
- drive the “Change of Control” and re-authorisation processes, and make sure KAST products fit “under the new licences”;
- work after the merger with the law firm Latham & Watkins on legal matters and with the consultancy FS Com on regulatory ones;
- launch KAST Business and KAST Private in Europe after the acquisition.
Read together, those lines say what KAST is buying: legal entities, staff and the right to apply to keep their permissions. They also say the regulatory part was not finished when the advert went up. The copy on web3.career gives inconsistent pay ranges, and it is not the original posting, so it shows intent rather than a completed transaction.
Why a licence can be worth more than the business
Gemini spent 2024 and 2025 collecting European permissions. Its EU arm, Gemini Intergalactic EU, obtained a virtual financial assets licence in Malta in December 2024. In May 2025 an affiliate, Gemini Intergalactic EU Artemis, received a MiFID II investment firm licence for derivatives from the same regulator, and on 20 August 2025 Malta’s Financial Services Authority (MFSA) granted it a licence under MiCA, the EU crypto rulebook. Gemini said at the time that the MiCA licence let it serve customers in 30 European countries and jurisdictions through the passport system, which lets a firm licensed in one member state work across the European Economic Area.
Those licences are slow to obtain and expensive to keep. In April 2026, CoinDesk had already reported that potential buyers were looking at Gemini’s closed UK and European units mainly for their permissions. A price below $10 million fits that reading: the businesses had almost no customers left, and Gemini’s own figures show how little revenue they still brought in. The basics of the EU regime are in our MiCA guide for crypto users.
A licence does not simply pass to a new owner with the shares, though. Under MiCA, a company that wants to take a qualifying stake in a licensed crypto-asset service provider must notify that firm’s home regulator, here the MFSA in Malta, which assesses the buyer before the purchase can go ahead. The UK runs its own change-in-control approval for regulated firms at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). That is why KAST’s advert speaks of change of control and re-authorisation rather than of an operating business ready to use.
Several points remain unknown. Nobody has said which permissions are still active, whether all of them are part of the deal, or whether the MFSA and the FCA have received or approved a change-of-control application. The public ESMA register of MiCA firms, which our report on Italy’s first MiCA licence explains, would show any change of name or status once regulators record it.
Gemini’s European retreat, in its own filings
Gemini’s exit itself is fully on the record. It was announced on 5 February 2026. The exchange said it would leave the UK, the EU and Australia, cut about 25% of its staff, roughly 200 people, and keep its US and Singapore businesses. “These foreign markets have proven hard to win in for various reasons, and we find ourselves stretched thin,” Gemini’s founders wrote in a blog post, as quoted by The Block.
Gemini’s quarterly report for the three months to 30 June 2026, filed with the SEC on 13 August, puts the decision in accounting terms. It describes a plan to wind down operations in the UK, the EU, other European jurisdictions and Australia, the exit from leases in London, Malta and San Francisco, and about $7.9 million of restructuring charges in the first half of 2026, none of them in the second quarter. The report does not mention a sale of the European units.
| Gemini figure (10-Q) | 2026 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| International revenue, Q2 | $2.353 million | $7.810 million |
| International revenue, first half | $7.448 million | $11.709 million |
| Total revenue, Q2 | $45.5 million | $33.3 million |
| Net loss, Q2 | $107.7 million | $133.2 million |
| Net loss, first half | $216.7 million | $282.5 million |
International revenue fell by about 70% year on year in the second quarter, and it covers more than Europe. A business that brought in a few million dollars a quarter, and was being shut down, explains a price that a single source puts below $10 million. Gemini’s share price tells the rest: the stock closed at a record low of $3.14 on 20 October, 89% below its IPO price.
The company has also raised money from its founders since the exit. In May 2026, Winklevoss Capital Fund invested $100 million in Gemini, buying Class A shares at $14 each and paying in bitcoin, according to CoinDesk. In August, Gemini signed a letter of intent with Apex Fintech Solutions to offer its regulated crypto prediction markets through brokerages.
What happened to Gemini’s European customers
For UK users, the timeline was set early. According to a MoonPay guide published on 6 February, which attributes the dates to the FCA, Gemini accounts in the UK became withdrawal-only from 5 March 2026 and were closed on 6 April 2026. EU customers went through a similar wind-down. According to an EU Personal Finance article of 6 November, tokens that are not authorised under MiCA, such as USDT, were restricted first, accounts became withdrawal-only on 5 March, and balances left after the cutoff were automatically converted to euros at the market rate. That article gives no date for the conversion.
A sale to KAST would not reopen those accounts. KAST does not run a crypto exchange like Gemini’s: it sells accounts, cross-border transfers and cards for holding and spending stablecoins. Former Gemini customers would not become KAST customers automatically, and neither company has said anything about legacy accounts or data.
A former Gemini user in the UK or the EU can still take a few practical steps:
- keep the statements and the closure emails Gemini sent in 2026, which help with tax returns and with any later claim;
- check that every withdrawal reached its destination wallet or bank account, and contact Gemini support, not KAST, for anything missing;
- treat any message that presents itself as a KAST takeover of a Gemini account with caution, since neither company has announced such a transfer.
UK readers who are choosing a new platform can follow the FCA’s new crypto regime, whose application window closes on 28 February 2027. In the EU, the MiCA register shows which platforms hold a licence and in which countries they passport it.
Who is KAST, the Singapore stablecoin firm
KAST is based in Singapore and was founded by Raagulan Pathy, a former executive at Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin. It offers accounts, transfers across borders and payment cards for stablecoins. In March 2026 it raised $80 million in a Series A round co-led by QED Investors and Left Lane Capital, and CoinDesk reported at the time that licensing and compliance were among the planned uses of the money.
A licensed European base would fit that plan. KAST’s open posts show it is already building legal and compliance teams for the UK and the EU, and the Dublin listing names two products, KAST Business and KAST Private, that it wants to launch in Europe once the acquisition is done.
The reported deal also lands in a quiet market for crypto takeovers. Architect Partners counted $2.2 billion of announced crypto M&A across 67 transactions in the third quarter, down 83% by value from the quarter before, according to CoinDesk.
What to watch next
Gemini’s third-quarter release is due after Thursday’s US close, and the 10-Q that follows it will cover the period in which the advert went up. In Malta, a change of owner would appear in the MFSA’s records and on the ESMA register once approved. KAST has so far only said it is looking for acquisitions.
For now the sale rests on one anonymous source and a recruitment advert, and it concerns businesses Gemini had already decided to close.