Overview
- The Central Bank of Ireland penalized Coinbase Europe after over 30 million transactions worth more than €176 billion were not properly monitored during a 12‑month period between 2021 and 2025, representing about 31% of activity.
- Coinbase attributed the lapse to three coding errors that caused five of 21 transaction‑monitoring scenarios to under‑screen activity in 2021–2022, saying the code was fixed within two to three weeks.
- Retrospective monitoring took nearly three years and resulted in 2,708 suspicious transaction reports being filed with Ireland’s Financial Intelligence Unit.
- Coinbase accepted the findings, acknowledging failures to fully monitor 30,442,437 transactions and to conduct additional required monitoring on 184,790 transactions, as well as deficiencies in internal AML/CTF controls.
- The settlement was reached on an undisputed‑facts basis, reducing the original €30.6 million penalty by 30% to €21.5 million, as the regulator reiterated expectations for prompt reporting of system failures.