Coinbase Europe fined €21.5 milion by the Central Bank of Ireland.
- IMLOVINGCRYPTO
- 20 hours ago
- 2 min read
The Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) has imposed a €21,464,734 fine on Coinbase Europe Limited for breaches of anti–money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) obligations between 2021 and 2025.
A hot topic that’s sure to stir debate among fintech and crypto companies at the upcoming Fintech Ireland Summit.
What happened?
According to the CBI’s public statement, Coinbase Europe’s transaction monitoring system was misconfigured resulting in over 30 million transactions worth €176 billion going unmonitored over a 12-month period.
That’s about 31% of all Coinbase Europe transactions during the affected timeframe.
To make matters worse, it took Coinbase nearly three years to complete retrospective monitoring of those transactions. This late review led to 2,708 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) being filed with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for further analysis and investigation.
The fine, the discount, and a bit of déjà vu:
Originally, the penalty stood at €30,663,906 (roughly 343.8 BTC), but Coinbase received a 30% settlement discount for cooperation bringing the total down to about €21.5 million.
And this isn’t Coinbase Europe’s first run-in with regulators.
Back in January 2023, the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) fined the company €3,325,000 for “providing crypto services in the Netherlands without proper registration.”
The bigger picture:
This case goes beyond AML technicalities. It’s a wake-up call for the entire European fintech and crypto sector.
With MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) around the corner, European regulators are sending a clear message: “technical misconfigurations” in compliance systems won’t fly anymore.
Coinbase can afford the fine but can the industry afford to ignore what it represents?
In the new regulatory landscape, transaction monitoring must work as flawlessly as the blockchain itself.
What’s your take? Are regulators going too far, or is this a necessary clean-up before MiCA fully kicks in?
Share your thoughts this one’s bound to spark a lively debate
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