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Yes, that's true - it was a loosely categorized collection of my thoughts while going through the frontend. The frontend architecture is very similar to that of BitMEX, the exchange that I built, so I am very interested in the choices they've made, why they chose them, and what's different.

Gemini is a spot exchange (simple buy/sell) while we're a derivatives exchange with much more complex requirements, so you'd expect a different set of decisions and tradeoffs, which is what I found. Gemini's real value (at this point) is in its ability to navigate regulatory capture, not necessarily in its technology. But their technology is a cut above what you usually see in Bitcoin exchanges. The exchange landscape has been plagued with unreliable/buggy exchanges, like the late Mt.Gox and the still-limping Bitfinex (which is much more complex).

On the whole, basic spot exchanges without leverage are relatively easy to create. I would love to do a more complete analysis but of course I don't have any inside information. I would be very interested in their backend, which appears to (possibly) be Scala. No clues as to whether they're using a SQL database or something more specialized like KDB+, which we use and love.




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