The Central Bank of Ireland takes enforcement action against Coinbase Europe
07 November 2025 Ireland
Image: OlafGedanitzCreative/stock.adobe.com
Coinbase Europe has been fined almost €21.5 million for breaching its anti-money laundering (AML) and counter terrorist financing (CTF) transaction monitoring obligations between 2021 and 2025 — required by the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 (the CJA 2010) — by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Coinbase Europe accepted its breach in its transaction monitoring obligations under the CJA 2010, admitted to the prescribed contraventions, and agreed to the undisputed facts set out in the Settlement Notice.
As part of the settlement agreement, the Central Bank determined that sanctions comprising a reprimand and monetary penalty in the amount of approximately €30.6 million are warranted, with a 30 per cent settlement scheme discount applied, bringing the amount to roughly €21.5 million.
As a virtual asset service provider, Coinbase Europe, a subsidiary of the Coinbase Group and provider of cryptoassets and wallet services to facilitate the use of their trading platform, is required to monitor customer transactions on an ongoing basis.
The company is required to file a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) with the national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Revenue Commissioners if a transaction is suspected of facilitating money laundering or terrorist financing.
The Central Bank has fined Coinbase Europe due to faults in the configuration of its transaction monitoring system, resulting in an excess of 30 million transactions failing to be sufficiently monitored over a 12-month period, with the value of said transactions amounting to over €176 billion, and accounting for approximately 31 per cent of Coinbase Europe transactions conducted in this timeframe.
Further analysis and potential investigation of 2,798 STRs by the FIU occurred due to Coinbase Europe taking almost three years to complete its monitoring of the impacted transactions, and they were found to have contained suspicions associated with money laundering, fraud and scams, drug trafficking, cyber-attacks, and child sexual exploitation.
Colm Kincaid, deputy governor of Consumer and Investor Protection, says: “To be effective in combating financial crime, law enforcement agencies rely on regulated financial institutions to have systems in place to monitor transactions and report suspicions.”
“Where system failures do occur, it is imperative that they are reported to the Central Bank without delay so that appropriate actions can be taken to manage and mitigate the risk.”
In response to the fines, Coinbase have said its Transaction Monitoring System (TMS) — a software developed to analyse financial transactions to detect suspicious patterns or anomalies in need of investigation — was inadvertently subject to three coding errors, resulting in five of the 21 scenarios it had built not fully screening transactions between 2021 and 2022.
The faulty scenarios were intended to generate alerts that would then be investigated by a compliance team, although the other scenarios were not affected by the aforementioned coding errors, according to Coinbase.
The company says the coding errors were identified as part of its efforts to monitor and test compliance systems, and, once detected, were fixed within two to three weeks, with impacted transactions run back through the fixed TMS scenarios.
Approximately 185k transactions were identified, of which roughly 2,700 STRs were filed, with a cumulative value of €13 million.
As part of the settlement, the CBI and Coinbase Europe cannot say that the transactions within these 2,700 reports actually resulted in criminal activity.
In addition to correcting the coding errors, Coinbase and Coinbase Europe have highlighted their commitment to compliance, and have outlined the enhancement of its testing and monitoring of TMS scenarios, along with Coinbase Europe augmenting its oversight of Coinbase’s systems, and a continued investment into the building of new TMS scenarios.
In their press release responding to the settlement, Coinbase says they “recognise the importance of effective AML procedures and take our obligations under AML legislation and regulatory guidance very seriously”.
The sanctions have been accepted by Coinbase Europe and are subject to confirmation by the High Court, taking effect once confirmed.
Coinbase Europe accepted its breach in its transaction monitoring obligations under the CJA 2010, admitted to the prescribed contraventions, and agreed to the undisputed facts set out in the Settlement Notice.
As part of the settlement agreement, the Central Bank determined that sanctions comprising a reprimand and monetary penalty in the amount of approximately €30.6 million are warranted, with a 30 per cent settlement scheme discount applied, bringing the amount to roughly €21.5 million.
As a virtual asset service provider, Coinbase Europe, a subsidiary of the Coinbase Group and provider of cryptoassets and wallet services to facilitate the use of their trading platform, is required to monitor customer transactions on an ongoing basis.
The company is required to file a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) with the national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Revenue Commissioners if a transaction is suspected of facilitating money laundering or terrorist financing.
The Central Bank has fined Coinbase Europe due to faults in the configuration of its transaction monitoring system, resulting in an excess of 30 million transactions failing to be sufficiently monitored over a 12-month period, with the value of said transactions amounting to over €176 billion, and accounting for approximately 31 per cent of Coinbase Europe transactions conducted in this timeframe.
Further analysis and potential investigation of 2,798 STRs by the FIU occurred due to Coinbase Europe taking almost three years to complete its monitoring of the impacted transactions, and they were found to have contained suspicions associated with money laundering, fraud and scams, drug trafficking, cyber-attacks, and child sexual exploitation.
Colm Kincaid, deputy governor of Consumer and Investor Protection, says: “To be effective in combating financial crime, law enforcement agencies rely on regulated financial institutions to have systems in place to monitor transactions and report suspicions.”
“Where system failures do occur, it is imperative that they are reported to the Central Bank without delay so that appropriate actions can be taken to manage and mitigate the risk.”
In response to the fines, Coinbase have said its Transaction Monitoring System (TMS) — a software developed to analyse financial transactions to detect suspicious patterns or anomalies in need of investigation — was inadvertently subject to three coding errors, resulting in five of the 21 scenarios it had built not fully screening transactions between 2021 and 2022.
The faulty scenarios were intended to generate alerts that would then be investigated by a compliance team, although the other scenarios were not affected by the aforementioned coding errors, according to Coinbase.
The company says the coding errors were identified as part of its efforts to monitor and test compliance systems, and, once detected, were fixed within two to three weeks, with impacted transactions run back through the fixed TMS scenarios.
Approximately 185k transactions were identified, of which roughly 2,700 STRs were filed, with a cumulative value of €13 million.
As part of the settlement, the CBI and Coinbase Europe cannot say that the transactions within these 2,700 reports actually resulted in criminal activity.
In addition to correcting the coding errors, Coinbase and Coinbase Europe have highlighted their commitment to compliance, and have outlined the enhancement of its testing and monitoring of TMS scenarios, along with Coinbase Europe augmenting its oversight of Coinbase’s systems, and a continued investment into the building of new TMS scenarios.
In their press release responding to the settlement, Coinbase says they “recognise the importance of effective AML procedures and take our obligations under AML legislation and regulatory guidance very seriously”.
The sanctions have been accepted by Coinbase Europe and are subject to confirmation by the High Court, taking effect once confirmed.
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