Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, met with the SEC thirty times over eighteen months seeking regulatory guidance on how to operate a compliant crypto exchange in the United States. The SEC nevertheless sued Coinbase in June 2023, accusing the platform of operating as an unregistered securities exchange, a case that was ultimately dismissed with prejudice in February 2025. The company’s legal defense cost approximately fifty million dollars. In March 2026, shareholder Kevin Meehan filed a derivative lawsuit against Armstrong and other Coinbase executives alleging breaches of fiduciary duty regarding potentially misleading statements about customer asset custody and compliance issues related to listing certain tokens. The suit also references a fifty million dollar settlement reached in 2023 with the New York Department of Financial Services for anti-money laundering compliance failures.
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