The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said in a news release on Friday that the exchange platform had paid Coinbase $ 6.5 million to settle claims from regulators that it had reported misleading transaction data.
According to the CFTC, between January 2015 and September 2018, Coinbase recklessly provided false, misleading or inaccurate reports on transactions in digital assets. The agency claims that two trading programs operated by Coinbase generated orders that traded with each other, which could mislead traders about the trading volume on the exchange now called Coinbase Pro.
The CFTC has also fined Coinbase for what is known as ‘laundering’ in the Litecoin cryptocurrency and bitcoin run by a former Coinbase employee on Coinbase’s GDAX platform. Laundry is banned because it creates a false appearance of the trading volume.
A Coinbase spokesman said in a statement The edge that he did not acknowledge or deny the charges of the CFTC, and ‘proactively consulted with the CFTC’ during the investigation. The government notes that the settlement order “does not contain any finding of harm to any Coinbase customer.” The company says he ‘firmly believes[s] that Coinbase has always wanted to create a reliable and secure trading environment for the benefit of our customers. ‘
Last month, Coinbase filed paperwork to list its shares on the NASDAQ exchange. According to the company’s S-1 prospectus, Coinbase had 43 million verified users at the end of 2020, with a total of $ 90 billion in assets in trust. Since its inception in 2012 as a platform for bitcoin trading, Coinbase has handled approximately $ 456 billion worth of transactions. Last year, the company had revenue of $ 1.2 billion, making a profit of $ 322 million.