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Coinbase settles FOIA case against SEC over destroyed Gensler texts

The settlement includes a $150,000 payment to Coinbase and SEC changes to record-retention policies after the agency admitted it wiped former Chair Gary Gensler’s messages.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Regulation

Coinbase has settled its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after the SEC acknowledged it destroyed former Chair Gary Gensler’s text messages, according to Bitcoin Magazine.

Chief legal officer Paul Grewal disclosed the terms in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, saying the SEC will pay Coinbase $150,000 and make reforms to its record-retention policies.

Coinbase had filed the FOIA requests in 2023 seeking records that could show how the SEC decided to treat crypto as securities, the same issue at the center of the SEC’s June enforcement case against the company.

The dispute followed an inspector general finding that nearly a year of Gensler texts, from October 2022 to September 2023, were wiped after the SEC reset his phone before a backup was made, a window that covered the collapse of FTX and the SEC’s hardest push against crypto exchanges.

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