What GUSD is
GUSD, the Gemini Dollar, launched in September 2018 as one of the first stablecoins to operate under direct US state banking supervision. Issued by Gemini Trust Company, a New York limited-purpose trust company chartered and examined by the New York State Department of Financial Services, GUSD is an ERC-20 token redeemable 1:1 for US dollars. Every GUSD in circulation is meant to be matched by cash and short-dated US Treasury holdings, with monthly attestations carried out by an independent accounting firm and published for anyone to check.
The pitch was straightforward: bring the compliance rigour of a regulated trust company to a stablecoin, at a time when Tether's reserve disclosures were widely distrusted and USDC didn't yet exist. Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, built GUSD as a companion to its exchange, with redemptions processed through Gemini's own banking relationships rather than a separate custodian network.
Where it stands now
GUSD's fortunes turned in November 2022, when Genesis Global Capital — the crypto lender behind Gemini's Earn programme — halted withdrawals and later filed for bankruptcy. Gemini Earn had let retail users lend out crypto, including GUSD, to Genesis for yield, and roughly 340,000 users found their funds frozen. Gemini spent over a year fighting Genesis and its parent Digital Currency Group to recover assets, eventually settling and returning funds to Earn users in 2024. The episode didn't touch GUSD's dollar-for-dollar backing, but it wrecked confidence in the Gemini ecosystem broadly, and GUSD's supply never recovered.
By mid-2026, GUSD's market capitalisation sits in the tens of millions of dollars — a rounding error next to USDT and USDC, and smaller than newer entrants like PYUSD. Daily volume is thin, liquidity is shallow outside Gemini's own order books, and it has largely become a compliance showcase rather than a working medium of exchange.
Risks
The reserve backing and NYDFS oversight are real and well-documented, which puts counterparty and fraud risk on the lower end for a stablecoin. But GUSD carries concentration risk of a different sort: it depends entirely on Gemini remaining solvent and in regulators' good graces, and a token this illiquid can gap violently on redemption stress or exchange-specific news. Anyone holding meaningful size should also weigh the practical risk that GUSD's low volume makes it hard to exit quickly without moving the price.