Coinbase Europe Fined €21.5 Million for AML Monitoring Breakdown Affecting €176 Billion in Transactions

Regulator Says 31% of Coinbase Europe’s Transaction Volume Escaped Ongoing Surveillance

TL;DR

• Central Bank of Ireland fined Coinbase Europe €21.46 million for anti–money laundering failures between 2021 and 2025.
• Over 30 million transactions worth €176 billion went unmonitored due to coding errors.
• Regulator says the case shows crypto platforms’ monitoring systems lag behind their market scale.

Coinbase Europe Limited, the Irish arm of U.S. exchange giant Coinbase Global Inc., has been hit with a €21.46 million fine by the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) after what regulators described as a “massive compliance breakdown.” The sanction, announced on November 6 2025, marks the first enforcement action in Ireland’s crypto sector and one of the largest penalties ever imposed on a virtual asset service provider in Europe.

Regulators determined that between April 23, 2021, and March 19, 2025, Coinbase Europe failed to properly monitor 30,442,437 transactions valued at over €176 billion — roughly 31 percent of the platform’s total transaction volume during that period. The lapse, caused by what the company later identified as three coding errors in its transaction-monitoring software, went unresolved for nearly a year and took almost three years to fully remediate. Those technical faults affected five of 21 core monitoring scenarios, including those triggered by unusual wallet activity and transactions involving special characters in address strings.

The CBI said Coinbase’s European unit failed to “fully and properly monitor” transactions for potential money laundering or terrorist financing risks as required by Ireland’s Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010. Although the company ultimately filed 2,708 suspicious transaction reports with Irish authorities once the issue was discovered, the regulator noted that 184,790 transactions still escaped subsequent review. The unmonitored activity, CBI Deputy Governor Colm Kincaid warned, “creates an opportunity for criminals to evade detection — and criminals will take that opportunity.” He emphasized that crypto’s anonymity and cross-border nature “make it especially attractive to criminals looking to move their funds.”

Coinbase Europe admitted the violations and accepted the sanction under Ireland’s Administrative Sanctions Procedure, receiving a 30 percent discount from the initial €30.66 million fine for settling early. The CBI confirmed the action as its 162nd enforcement case to date, bringing total fines issued by the authority to over €428 million. Officials stressed that the penalty reflects not malicious intent but the scale and duration of the systemic failure, as Coinbase Europe’s average annual revenue during the period reached about €417 million.

Company representatives said the coding defects were fixed within weeks of discovery and that all affected transactions have since been reviewed. Coinbase Europe added that it has strengthened its transaction monitoring systems and compliance testing framework to prevent recurrence. The Central Bank, meanwhile, confirmed that although the unmonitored transactions had not been tied to criminal offences, their sheer volume represented a serious supervisory failure in a rapidly expanding crypto market where the crypto price index and coin market cap continue to grow far faster than traditional oversight systems.

The sanction arrives as global regulators tighten AML requirements on digital-asset platforms, a sector where the crypto price and market volatility often outpace regulatory adaptation. Ireland’s enforcement move is expected to serve as a blueprint for EU authorities preparing to implement MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) in 2025, as compliance oversight takes on a larger role within Europe’s broader financial supervision landscape.

This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.