While Gemini charges lower fees than many of its competitors and offers big discounts to clients moving large volumes, it's not free. (As an aside, the supposed free flow of money is one of the great myths of the Bitcoin world, since most exchanges charge around 5 percent of the value to either buy or sell Bitcoin.)
What world does this guy live in where most exchanges charge 5%?
Yep, that's pretty overpriced for trading fees. Factor in low liquidity on small exchanges and maybe. And, if you're moving currency around between countries too, then 5% is about right. I used to pay that when I cashed out to GBP from Stamp thanks to flat fees and appalling exchange rates from the banks. But yes, the guy clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.
I see little value to attempt to give benefit to anyone who is asserting "most exchanges charge around 5%" because that is nearly pure ridiculous misinformation that is almost the opposite of the general BTC trading tendency.
Actual trading fees on exchanges are quite liberating for regular joe blows who may otherwise feel a bit priced out in being able to trading reasonably set up trading accounts and to attempt to trade with little to no fees. I generally pay between 0% and 0.5% in fees for each transaction, and I consider my trades based on these low fees, and I even prefer 0% when it is possible. That is Bitfinex, GDAX, Stamp, Gemini, Uphold and BTC-e.
Sporadically, I do trade on Local bitcoins, and that is 1%, and actually initial buying of bitcoins on some of the exchanges may be 1% to 5%, and sending money to exchanges may cost 5% or more, if you do not find ways to buy for lower fees, but characterizing "trading fees" as 5% does put someone in the category of lacking factual information that is relevant to points being made.
Overall bitcoin seems to be a fairly liberating phenomenon when it comes to various fees, whether that be trading fees or otherwise; however, it still remains imperative that people do a little homework and weigh their options. There are always going to be niches of any financial system that attempt to gouge and/or make a decent profit from folks who are less informed, and surely a lot of those systems provide a necessary service and that is why they are able to get away with higher fees. But those higher fee systems are not reflective of the norm in bitcoin, which seems to be in fact a lower cost way of moving around and storing value (so long as a person attempts to look into various low cost options beyond the options that may first pop up at first glance).