Coinbase Government Requests Surge 19% as Global Surveillance Expands

Coinbase has seen an increase of 19% year-over-year for government and law-enforcement information requests, reaching 12,716 from October 2024 to September 2025. The US leads in single-made requests by country, but more than half of the requests came from other countries, with Germany leading.

Data is from Coinbase’s Transparency Report 2025, published on December 1. As described, the report includes all requests made by government agencies and law enforcement in connection with civil, criminal, or other investigative matters.

In 2024, the exchange received 10,707 requests of the same nature, again with the US leading with 5,252 requests, followed by Germany with 1,272 requests, and 51% of all requests coming from outside the US.

In 2025, 5,920 out of the 12,716 requests came from the US, and Germany issued 1,210 requests—slightly less than the previous year. Non-US requests increased by 200 basis points to 53%, with France seeing a 111% growth to 1,114 requests.

Together, the US, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Australia own approximately 80% of all private information requests against Coinbase customers. The biggest decreases are within South Korea, Sweden, and Germany, with 67%, 31%, and 5% decreases, respectively. Moldova, Brazil, and Costa Rica had the most significant increases.

Globally, 95% of the requests are somewhat attached to criminal matters, per the report, while 5% are related to civil or administrative issues. In the meantime, US-originated requests are 52% related to federal crime investigations, followed by State & Local Criminal requests with 39%. Civil matters account for 6% in the federal sphere and 2% in the State & Local sphere.

Law enforcement information requests by country of origin, from Q4 2024 to Q3 2025 | Source: Coinbase

Privacy Concerns Are Also Growing

Information gathering and sharing are ongoing concerns in finance and, especially, in the crypto industry—raising discussions related to privacy and the importance of privacy-enhancing solutions.

Part of the concerns relate to data breaches, when valuable databases like Coinbase’s customer information are compromised by malicious attackers, effectively endangering the customers whose data was leaked to effective criminals.

In May, for example, 69,461 Coinbase users had their sensitive data exposed, Coinbase reported. Follow-up news coverage in September revealed that estimated damages from the data breach surpassed $400 million in an alleged cover-up.

What we have seen in the following months of this breach was an increase in Google searches for privacy coin, later followed by a 1,000% surge in the price of Zcash ZEC $347.4 24h volatility: 19.1% Market cap: $5.72 B Vol. 24h: $1.62 B , a leading privacy coin.

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