The Central Bank of Ireland has fined Coinbase $24.75 million (€21,464,734) for breaching anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) monitoring obligations between 2021 and 2025.
According to the announcement, the Irish regulator and the crypto exchange settled on November 5, 2025, resulting in the $35.3 million (€30.6 million) penalty being reduced to $24.75 million after a 30% settlement scheme discount.
Coinbase Europe has admitted the prescribed contraventions and has agreed to the undisputed facts as set out in the Settlement Notice (…). The sanctions have been accepted by Coinbase Europe. The sanctions are subject to confirmation by the High Court and will take effect once confirmed.
As a registered Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) in Ireland, the crypto exchange is required to monitor customer transactions and file a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) with the national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Revenue Commissioners if it suspects that any given transaction is facilitating money laundering or terrorist financing.
Nonetheless, Coinbase’s European arm took almost 3 years to fully complete monitoring of the over 30 million impacted transactions, which led to the reporting of 2,708 STRs to the FIU for analysis and potential investigation. The submitted STRs contained suspicions of serious criminal activities, the statement noted.
Colm Kincaid, Deputy Governor of Consumer and Investor Protection, asserted that “to be effective in combatting financial crime, law enforcement agencies rely on regulated financial institutions to have systems in place to monitor transactions and report suspicions. The failure of such a system within any financial institution creates an opportunity for criminals to evade detection – and criminals will take that opportunity.”
“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,” he concluded.
Last week, Coinbase also faced scrutiny in the US, after Senator Chris Murphy accused the crypto exchange of participating in President Donald Trump’s alleged “corruption factory.”
Coinbase’s CLO, Paul Grewal, and CPO, Faryar Shirzad, refuted the claims, affirming that the Senator’s allegations were misinformed. Shirzad argued that the SEC lawsuits against the exchange and multiple other crypto companies “were part of a grotesque pattern of bullying and abuse of power by the previous chair.”
Meanwhile, Grewal asserted that “What was corrupt was allowing us to go public ‘in the public interest’ and then suing us. What was corrupt was what the Third Circuit held was an arbitrary and capricious denial of our request to get basic rules for crypto.”
