A U.S. digital asset exchange has filed a public records request to estimate how much the regulator has spent on cryptocurrency cases in recent years, including those against Coinbase.

Updated March 3, 2025, 15:23 UTC Published March 3, 2025, 13:30 UTC

What you need to know:

• Under a new public records request, U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to tally up all the costs and resources it has devoted to complying with cryptocurrency laws over the past four years.
• The regulator and the exchange have been locked in a lengthy legal battle over a separate Freedom of Information Act request for access to internal communications regarding their stance on cryptocurrencies.

While the situation is becoming clearer following the recent dismissal of the enforcement case, Coinbase is pushing the US Securities and Exchange Commission to provide an accounting of its spending on investigations and actions against the broader industry over the past years.

The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States is filing a Freedom of Information Act request — through its contractor History Associates Inc. — seeking internal agency records on the costs of its compliance campaign targeting digital asset companies. The request includes information on total spending on investigations and compliance efforts over the past four years; a list of companies targeted; the number of employees and contractors involved in the cases; and financial data on the cryptocurrency compliance unit’s work under previous management.

The SEC is now under new leadership since the appointment of President Donald Trump, who named Commissioner Mark Ueda as acting chairman. Ueda has initiated significant changes to the agency’s stance on cryptocurrencies, replacing lawyers, ending investigations, and dismissing long-standing lawsuits, including one against Coinbase.

“We are asking the SEC to provide this information voluntarily and in accordance with their FOIA obligations to avoid having to go to court to obtain what we believe the American people should know,” Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal told CoinDesk.

Coinbase has previously filed a federal lawsuit against the SEC over issues related to the public filings, and the company's efforts to disclose information about the regulator's internal deliberations on cryptocurrency oversight are ongoing.

While the agency has exempted digital asset companies from lawsuits, some in the industry have called for the SEC to take a more rigorous approach to its actions against the industry under Gary Gensler, including requiring the employees involved to fire them. Grewal stressed that the records request was not a response to past actions, but that transparency about what happened was important.

“This isn’t just a matter of Coinbase or anyone else getting credit or trying to blame the SEC by admitting that the last four years were a mistake,” he said. “Rather, it’s a matter of learning from the past so that it doesn’t happen again.”

While the public has a right to access government documents, the process of obtaining them is often hampered by agencies and can take months or even years. The SEC can cite exemptions for active cases, which still include many crypto cases involving companies like Kraken, Ripple, and Crypto.com. However, Grewal argues that closed cases like Coinbase and many other companies that have received positive news in recent days should be available for review.

“Let’s put the facts on the table,” Grewal said. “Let’s count what the costs were. Let’s consider whether there were any benefits that should be assessed as well. And then let’s determine whether our country and economy needed this, and how do we design rules to prevent this from happening again?”

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