SEC Pays $150,000 Settle Coinbase FOIA Suit

The SEC will pay Coinbase $150,000 to resolve a lawsuit over missing internal records, including former Chair Gary Gensler’s deleted text messages.

SEC Pays $150,000 Settle Coinbase FOIA Suit

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Written by

Felix Ng

staff editor

Reviewed by

Yohan Yun

staff editor

Written by

Felix Ng

staff editor

Reviewed by

Yohan Yun

staff editor

SEC settles Coinbase suit over ‘text messages that disappeared’

Latest News

Published

Jul 23, 2026

The settlement follows a watchdog report last year that blamed “avoidable errors” for the loss of nearly a year’s worth of Gary Gensler’s text messages.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to pay $150,000 in legal fees to settle a Coinbase lawsuit seeking internal records from the agency at the height of the Biden-era SEC crackdown on crypto.

The agreement,

filed

on Wednesday, ends a two-year lawsuit between the SEC and Coinbase, in which the crypto exchange sought internal documents from the regulator to uncover evidence of “crypto by enforcement.” An internal report in 2025 revealed the SEC had deleted nearly a year of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s texts due to “avoidable” errors.

“The agency tasked with policing corporate record-keeping somehow lost reams of its own text messages between Mr. Gensler and other officials during the most intense period of the anti-crypto campaign,” said Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal in an op-ed

published

by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, adding that the SEC will pay a $150,000 “award” and has fixed its record retention policies.

The settlement marks another legal victory for Coinbase under the Trump administration. The SEC, under the leadership of Paul Atkins, has taken a more crypto-friendly approach and dropped several high-profile enforcement actions against crypto companies, including Coinbase, in 2025.

Related:

Coinbase chief legal officer to transition to advisory role on July 31

In February, Coinbase reached a

settlement

with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, with the FDIC agreeing to pay $188,440 in legal fees and revising aspects of its transparency practices after a federal court found it had violated the Freedom of Information Act.

“The years of litigation were worth it. We successfully uncovered dozens of crypto ‘pause letters’—indisputable proof of OCP2.0 and the coordinated effort to sideline the industry,” Grewal said in an X post in February.

Grewal to transition from chief legal officer

Paul Grewal, who has served as Coinbase’s chief legal officer since 2020, is set to transition to an advisory role at the exchange starting on July 31, with Coinbase legal vice presidents Molly Abraham and Ryan VanGrack set to become general counsel and vice chair, respectively.

Magazine:

Will the crypto lobby’s $189M campaign get CLARITY over the line?

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