Ireland\u2019s central bank imposed a fine of 21.5 million euros ($24.7 million) Thursday on crypto giant Coinbase over transaction monitoring failures, including some potentially linked to criminal activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Central Bank of Ireland said in a statement that it had fined the firm \u201cfor breaching its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing transaction monitoring obligations between 2021 and 2025\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coinbase is registered in Ireland as a \u201cvirtual asset service provider\u201d (VASP) and has its European headquarters there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company is accused of a \u201cfailure to monitor over 30 million transactions\u201d over a year, amounting to 176 billion euros and approximately a third of the transfers carried out by Coinbase Europe Limited (CEBL), the central bank said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company then \u201ctook nearly three years to complete the monitoring of the transactions in question,\u201d said the statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The events span a total period from April 2021 to March 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of these transfers, amounting to some 13 million euros, are suspected to be linked to child sexual exploitation, fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, or cyberattacks, said the bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The initial fine of more than 30 million euros was eventually reduced to 21.5 million following an agreement with the firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement Thursday Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges, acknowledged \u201ctechnical programming errors\u201d but said they \u201chave since been corrected\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crypto industry, seeking legitimacy, has long sought to shed its image as a tool favoured by scammers and criminals, and hopes to position itself as a reliable alternative to the traditional financial system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Colm Kincaid, the bank\u2019s deputy governor, said \u201ccrypto has particular technological features which, together with its anonymity-enhancing capabilities and cross-border nature, makes it especially attractive to criminals looking to move their funds\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ireland\u2019s central bank imposed a fine of 21.5 million euros ($24.7 million) Thursday on crypto giant Coinbase over transaction monitoring failures, including some potentially linked to criminal activities. The Central Bank of Ireland said in a statement that it had fined the firm \u201cfor breaching its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing transaction monitoring obligations between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[3820,313,3819,2218],"class_list":["post-8857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-giant","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8859,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857\/revisions\/8859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}