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The Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to pay $150,000 and produce remaining responsive records to settle a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by History Associates Inc. on behalf of Coinbase, according to a joint status report filed July 22 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The deal ends more than two years of litigation over what then-Chair Gary Gensler and other top SEC officials knew about Ethereum's shift to proof-of-stake and a series of earlier crypto enforcement actions.
History Associates filed the suit in June 2024 after Coinbase's records requests on the SEC's investigations into Zachary Coburn, Enigma MPC, and the Ethereum merge went unanswered. The litigation forced the agency to hand over thousands of documents, with the court explicitly ordering priority on any records sent, received, or evaluated by Gensler tied to Ethereum's transition from proof-of-work. The discovery process then stalled in September 2025 after the SEC's Inspector General reported that texts from Gensler's phone between October 2022 and September 2023 had been accidentally deleted. Later filings showed 21 phones belonging to top officials had been wiped, including five tied to staff members named in the Coinbase litigation; the SEC disclosed the deletions to the National Archives in July 2025.
Why it matters
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong framed the outcome as part of a broader transparency fight, linking the SEC's deletions to the FDIC's alleged burial of evidence during the 2023 banking crisis. The settlement is a flat fee covering legal costs rather than a court finding of wrongdoing, but it puts on the record that a federal regulator lost text messages from its own chair during the period the agency was actively pursuing crypto enforcement. For every future FOIA plaintiff, the precedent lowers the cost of demanding agency records and raises the cost of failing to preserve them.
Market impact
The settlement itself is unlikely to move crypto prices; the $150,000 figure is rounding error against either Coinbase's litigation budget or the SEC's enforcement war chest. The lasting read is reputational.
Frequently asked questions
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What did the SEC agree to in the Coinbase FOIA settlement?
The SEC agreed to pay a flat $150,000 fee to cover plaintiff legal costs and to produce any remaining responsive documents. Once production is complete, the case will be formally dismissed.
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Why did Coinbase sue the SEC under FOIA in the first place?
History Associates Inc., working for Coinbase, sued in June 2024 after the SEC failed to fully respond to public records requests on its investigations into Zachary Coburn, Enigma MPC, and Ethereum's shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
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What did the lawsuit uncover about Gary Gensler's text messages?
The SEC's Inspector General reported in September 2025 that Gensler's texts from October 2022 through September 2023 had been accidentally deleted. Later filings showed 21 phones belonging to top SEC officials had been wiped, including five tied to staff named in the Coinbase case.
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How did Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong react to the settlement?
Armstrong linked the outcome to the FDIC's alleged burial of evidence during the 2023 banking crisis, writing on X that the deletions were uncovered because Coinbase fought to expose the truth and that the result benefits every American expecting government accountability.
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Will the settlement affect crypto prices or future SEC enforcement?
The $150,000 figure is too small to move markets, but the precedent is meaningful. Future enforcement defendants can cite the case when demanding discovery of internal agency deliberations, and the deleted-record finding raises the bar for the SEC's recordkeeping on crypto matters going forward.
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