The Central Bank of Ireland has fined Coinbase Ireland €3.25 million for breaches of rules governing customer money and the oversight of outsourced services.
Coinbase admitted the breaches on 21 October and accepted a reprimand as part of the settlement, according to a statement from the regulator. The fine was reduced from €4.65 million after a 30% settlement discount, but the sanctions must be confirmed by the High Court before they take effect.
Coinbase said the problems had been fully resolved and that no customers had lost money or been unable to access their funds. The company added that it had reported several issues to the central bank itself in January 2024 and had since strengthened its safeguarding arrangements.
Coinbase established its Irish subsidiary in Dublin in July 2018. It received an e-money licence from the Central Bank of Ireland in 2019 and was registered by the regulator as a virtual asset service provider in 2022.
Customer money mixed across entities
The central bank’s settlement notice said deficiencies in Coinbase’s handling of customer funds, including daily shortfalls in safeguarded money, amounted to €5.2 million ($5.8 million) in 2024.
It found that Coinbase Ireland allowed customer funds to be mixed with money held by other Coinbase entities. For about 19 months between March 2023 and October 2024, around 30 institutional clients paid dollars into bank accounts belonging to Coinbase Inc., rather than accounts held in the Irish entity’s name.
Money belonging to some customers who had moved from Coinbase UK was also placed in the UK entity’s safeguarding account until 19 August 2025.
“CBIE could not demonstrate adequate internal control mechanisms to validate that Users’ Funds were properly segregated and safeguarded because it was unable to accurately calculate how much it was obligated to safeguard on a daily basis,” the regulator said.
The Central Bank of Ireland warned that the failures could have made it more difficult to return customer funds if Coinbase Ireland had become insolvent.
“Had CBIE become insolvent when the above referenced breaches of their safeguarding obligations were in being, then Users may not have been able to promptly and fully regain their funds,” the notice stated. It described this as a fundamental failure to meet the regulator’s expectations for a wind-down strategy.
Concerns over outsourced oversight
The regulator also said Coinbase Ireland depended too heavily on infrastructure provided by its US parent company and did not have enough local expertise to oversee the safeguarding of funds.
Governance concerns had been raised in letters sent in July 2022 and March 2023, but the central bank said they were not adequately addressed.
“CBIE also committed serious outsourcing breaches, demonstrating a lack of appropriate skills and experience to oversee the activities of safeguarding undertaken by the OSP, which ultimately had a material impact on its ability to safeguard, further compounding the issues arising,” it said.
Coinbase appointed a safeguarding officer in December 2024. The central bank said the identified shortfall was corrected in June 2024 and that a solution to the underlying data problem was implemented in October 2024.
The penalty follows a separate €21.5 million fine imposed on Coinbase Europe in November 2025 after more than 30 million transactions went unmonitored, leading to 2,708 late suspicious transaction reports.
