Irish central bank fines Coinbase Ireland $3.6m over safeguarding failures

Key points

• The fine follows a 21.4 million-euro penalty on Coinbase Europe in 2025 over anti-money laundering failures.

Ireland's central bank has fined Coinbase Ireland 3.25 million euros ($3.6m) over alleged failures to safeguard customer funds and oversee outsourced services, CoinDesk reports. The Central Bank of Ireland said on Thursday that the exchange's Irish division had not put in place an adequate framework for governing outsourcing.

The regulator said Coinbase Ireland leaned excessively on its US-based parent, Coinbase Group, to run safeguarding processes and controls. It also cited weak system design and insufficient testing of those controls. Safeguarding and outsourcing rules require firms to keep customer funds fully backed and monitored, and to tell the regulator about material changes.

Coinbase said that when the crypto-friendly bank Silvergate neared collapse in 2023, it told 30 customers to deposit funds into an alternative account held at another US bank. That meant their money sat alongside funds belonging to customers of another Coinbase entity.

Coinbase said no customer lost money or was unable to reach their funds. The penalty comes almost a year after the Central Bank of Ireland fined Coinbase Europe 21.4 million euros for breaching anti-money laundering obligations between 2021 and 2025.

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