Coinbase Europe settles Irish enforcement action for €21.5m

Coinbase Europe has conceded it breached anti-money laundering laws, agreeing to a settlement that includes a formal reprimand and a significant financial penalty from the Central Bank of Ireland.

On Nov. 6, Ireland’s central bank announced it has fined Coinbase Europe Limited €21.5 million for what it describes as significant failures in its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing transaction monitoring.

The settlement, reached under an “undisputed facts” process, concludes a probe into compliance lapses that spanned from 2021 to 2025. Regulators cited faults in the configuration of the exchange’s automated monitoring system, which they claimed failed to properly screen over 30 million transactions valued at more than €176 billion during a 12 month period.

A breakdown of Coinbase’s compliance failure

According to Ireland’s central bank, it took Coinbase Europe nearly three years to fully complete the review of the 30 million-plus unmonitored transactions. The regulator said the delayed retrospective monitoring eventually led to 2,708 suspicious transaction reports being filed to Ireland’s Financial Intelligence Unit, uncovering activity linked to money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, cyberattacks, and even child exploitation.

The Central Bank of Ireland described the breakdown as a serious lapse that “created an opportunity for criminals to evade detection,” noting that the delayed detection of suspicious patterns undermined the broader AML and counter-terrorism framework.

Deputy Governor Colm Kincaid underscored that the episode highlights how weaknesses in crypto compliance systems can expose the financial system to significant risk, particularly given the cross-border and pseudonymous nature of digital assets.

“Crypto has particular technological features which, together with its anonymity-enhancing capabilities and cross-border nature, makes it especially attractive to criminals looking to move their funds. This is why it is especially important that firms engaged in crypto services have robust controls in place to identify and report suspicious transactions,” Kincaid said.

In settling the case, Coinbase Europe formally accepted the regulator’s findings, admitting it breached its obligations by failing to properly monitor over 30.4 million transactions. The company also conceded it did not adopt sufficient internal policies and controls to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, and it failed to conduct additional, required monitoring on nearly 185,000 specific transactions.

By agreeing to the “undisputed facts,” Coinbase avoided a protracted legal battle and received a 30 percent discount, reducing the original penalty of €30.6 million to the final €21.5 million figure.