Between January 2015 and September 2018, two Coinbase-operated trading programs matched orders with one another, resulting in transactions between accounts owned by Coinbase.
United States, March 20, 2021 /AlexaBlockchain/ – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday crypto exchange Coinbase Inc paid $6.5 million to settle charges it reported misleading transaction data that potentially inflated the apparent trading volume on its professional GDAX platform.
Between January 2015 and September 2018, two Coinbase-operated trading programs matched orders with one another, resulting in transactions between accounts owned by Coinbase. Transactional information of this type is used by market participants for price discovery … and potentially resulted in a perceived volume and level of liquidity of digital assets, including bitcoin, that was false, misleading, or inaccurate, the CFTC said.
- The settlement comes ahead of a planned stock market listing for the world’s largest crypto exchange.
- Coinbase has reached an implied $68 billion valuation ahead of its highly anticipated direct listing on the Nasdaq.
- The fine also includes so-called “wash trades” in Litecoin and bitcoin by a former Coinbase employee on GDAX.
- GDAX disclosed that Coinbase was trading on GDAX but failed to disclose it was operating more than one trading program and through multiple accounts, the CFTC said.
- Coinbase subsequently included the related information on its website and provided that information to reporting services and exchanges, either directly or through access to its website.
“The settlement order today does not include any finding of harm to any Coinbase customer,” a Coinbase spokesman said. “While Coinbase neither admits nor denies the CFTC’s findings, we firmly believe that Coinbase has always aimed to create a reliable and secure trading environment for the benefit of our customers.”