CFTC v. Coinbase Inc. (exchange wash trading, 2021)

Judgment entered

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In March 2021, the CFTC settled charges against digital asset exchange Coinbase Inc., ordering a US$6.5 million penalty for reckless false or misleading transaction reporting from its GDAX platform and for wash trading by a former employee in the Litecoin/Bitcoin pair.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$6.5m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$6.5m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced this matter on March 19, 2021 as release 8369-21. The respondents named are Coinbase Inc. (0 individuals, 1 entity).

The order finds that from January 2015 to September 2018 Coinbase ran two automated trading programs, Hedger and Replicator, whose orders sometimes matched each other, and Coinbase reported those trades to index and data providers without disclosing it traded through several accounts. The order also finds that over six weeks in August and September 2016 a former employee placed buy and sell orders in the Litecoin/Bitcoin pair that matched each other as wash trades, creating a misleading appearance of activity. Trades between Coinbase-owned accounts share one owner, so they are wash trades, not matched orders.

This library tags the matter as exchange wash trading and wash trading, based on the conduct the regulator describes. Each tag links to a page explaining how that technique works, what statute it engages, and what penalties comparable actions have attracted. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

A $6.5 million civil monetary penalty covering both sets of findings, and a cease-and-desist order.

Coinbase consented to the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Exchange wash trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Wash trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2021-03-19 CFTC release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• CFTC release
• CFTC order or complaint

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.