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The settlement follows a watchdog report last year that blamed \u201cavoidable errors\u201d for the loss of nearly a year\u2019s worth of Gary Gensler\u2019s text messages.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agreement, filed<\/span><\/a> 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 \u201ccrypto by enforcement.\u201d An internal report in 2025 revealed the SEC had deleted nearly a year of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler\u2019s texts due to \u201cavoidable\u201d errors.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d said Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal in an op-ed published<\/a> by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, adding that the SEC will pay a $150,000 \u201caward\u201d and has fixed its record retention policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n