Crypto exchange giant Coinbase has been fined €21.5 million by the Central Bank of Ireland for breaching anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) regulations between 2021 and 2025. The enforcement action was taken after it was found that Coinbase Europe failed to properly monitor more than 30 million transactions, with these lapses involving a transaction value of over €176 billion—representing about 31% of Coinbase Europe’s activity during the affected period.

The main failures included Coinbase’s inability to establish effective internal policies, controls, and procedures to detect and prevent money laundering or terrorist financing through its platform. There were also significant faults in the setup of its transaction monitoring system, and delays in identifying and reporting suspicious activity to authorities. It took Coinbase nearly three years to complete the review of the impacted transactions. The subsequent monitoring led to the filing of thousands of Suspicious Transaction Reports, linked to crimes such as fraud, drug trafficking, cyber-attacks, and child exploitation.

The Central Bank underscored that crypto’s technological features and cross-border nature make robust monitoring essential, as these characteristics are attractive to criminal actors. The failure to maintain proper transaction monitoring, the Bank stated, undermines efforts to detect and stop financial crime. Coinbase Europe admitted to these breaches and agreed to the fine as part of a settlement. The penalty is one of the largest imposed for AML failures in Ireland’s financial sector and highlights the increasing regulatory scrutiny on crypto firms operating in Europe.