Exchange News: Irish Central Bank Fines Coinbase for Compliance Software Failures

Coinbase Europe reaches a €21.5 million settlement with the Central Bank of Ireland following technical failures that left over 30 million transactions unmonitored.

Coinbase Europe Limited, the European affiliate of the major US crypto exchange Coinbase, has reached a significant settlement. The agreement is with the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) after technical compliance failures. Specifically, Coinbase has to pay $24.7 million (around $24.7 million worth of fines) to the government, which amounts to a total of $21.5 million in fines. This penalty covers violations of anti-money laundering (AML) obligations from 2021 to 2022.

Coinbase Europe Admits Major Compliance Failures in AML Monitoring

The exchange admitted that it had three coding errors that impacted its internal transaction monitoring software. This failure resulted in five out of its twenty-one monitoring scenarios only screening some transactions for suspicious activity. As a result, over 30 million transactions were not correctly monitored for an entire year. The value of these transactions that were not monitored was over EUR176 billion.

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Coinbase Europe has admitted that it violated its important transaction monitoring obligations. Furthermore, it admitted failing to adopt adequate internal policies and controls. These controls are needed to prevent and detect effectively terrorist financing and money laundering. The firm also accepted that it should have done extra monitoring of a further 184,790 transactions.

The total amount of the initially determined sanction by the Central Bank was more than 30.6 million euros. However, the CBI took a thirty percent discount under a settlement scheme. The settlement was made yesterday, November 5th, 2025. Coinbase Europe has accepted the reprimand and money penalty. The sanctions are, however, still subject to final confirmation by the High Court.

The Central Bank’s Deputy Governor, Colm Kincaid, stressed the severity of the failure. He pointed out that law enforcement depends a lot on regulated financial institutions to monitor and report on their suspicions. He said the failure of such a system opens a good opportunity for criminals.

Crypto assets are unique because they offer some very specific issues thanks to their technological features. Their ability to be cross-border and anonymous makes them particularly appealing to criminals. Therefore, it is of critical importance that companies that provide crypto services implement strong controls now.

Coinbase Files Late Reports, Strengthens Compliance Systems

The later review of the unmonitored transactions was a mammoth task. Coinbase Europe took nearly three years to complete the work of completely monitoring all the affected transactions. Following this review, the firm presented more than 2,700 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) to the authorities. These late reports indicated possible criminal activities for further action.

The STRs included suspicions of serious criminal activities. These included potential money laundering, various fraud and scam attempts, and cyber-attacks. In addition, there were suspicions linked to drug trafficking and child sexual exploitation material.

Coinbase publicly declared that it had found the problem through internal testing. It fixed the coding errors within a few weeks of discovery. Since then, the company has completely improved its testing protocols. It has also strengthened the monitoring of its Transaction Monitoring System to avoid such mistakes in the future. Coinbase understands the importance of proper AML procedures throughout the world.

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