Coinbase

The case that ended

In June 2023 the SEC sued Coinbase for operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency. On 27 February 2025 it dismissed that case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, and imposed nothing. Commissioner Hester Peirce recorded it in one line: "Today the Commission settled its case against Coinbase by dismissing it with prejudice" 2.

The reason given is worth reading carefully, because it is not a verdict either way. The Commission pointed at the formation of its Crypto Task Force and a move away from making policy through enforcement 2. That is a change in how the regulator works rather than a conclusion about this company — and it is still, for a reader, the difference between an open federal case and no case at all.

This site files it at zero cost to the score and shows it in the good tone rather than the red one. A register that keeps the accusation from 2023 and forgets the ending from 2025 would be telling a reader the opposite of what happened.

The breach it disclosed on itself

In May 2025 someone emailed Coinbase claiming to hold customer account information and internal documentation, and demanded money not to publish it. The company filed a Form 8-K with the SEC rather than quietly settling, which is the whole reason this paragraph can be written with figures in it.

The filing says the attacker "appears to have obtained this information by paying multiple contractors or employees working in support roles outside the United States to collect information", and that the access was "independently detected by the Company’s security monitoring" 1. Names, addresses, masked identifiers, government-ID images and balance snapshots were exposed. No customer funds were taken and no private keys were reached.

Coinbase did not pay: "The Company has not paid the threat actor’s demand" 1. It estimated expenses of roughly $180m to $400m for remediation and voluntary customer reimbursements 1.

This site’s security component scores breaches of customer funds, so by its own rule this does not move the number — and a reader should know it happened anyway. It is also the clearest illustration of what being a listed company buys: every other exchange here could have the same incident and no obligation to tell anyone the number.

Why the solvency evidence here is different in kind

Every other exchange on this list proves its reserves the same way: it publishes a snapshot of wallets it chooses, on a date it chooses, usually with a Merkle tree so customers can check their own balance is included. That is real and it is the weakest form of evidence in this directory, because it says nothing about liabilities — what the exchange owes against what it holds.

Coinbase does not publish one, and scores highest on solvency anyway. A company listed on a US exchange files audited accounts on a schedule somebody else enforces, with both sides of the balance sheet in them and an auditor who can be sued; Coinbase files with the SEC like any other issuer, which is where the 8-K above came from 1. That is why the record marks it as having no proof of reserves and still puts it at the top of that component: the thing proof of reserves is a substitute for is the thing this company actually does.