Coinbase received a fine of $3,600,000 from the Central Bank of the Netherlands
The Central Bank of the Netherlands announced that it issued a $3,600,000 fine to the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange. The reason for such a fine was the lack of the necessary registration with the company's management until September 22, 2022. The authorities reported that the crypto exchange ignored the rules between November 2020 and August 2022. Thus, Coinbase had no legal rights to provide services to its customers in the Netherlands, which, as far as we know, is exactly what Coinbase was doing.
De Nederlandsche Bank told that this decision was made for a long time. In order to reach a verdict, the Dutch Central Bank was able to conduct its own full-fledged investigation. It showed that at the beginning of Coinbase's activities in the country, they really did not comply with the necessary rules that were written for all service providers from the financial sector. In September 2022, Coinbase was able to obtain the necessary permission to implement their services in the country.
According to bank employees, the cryptocurrency exchange could not provide services with digital assets due to the lack of the required license. Despite this, Coinbase pursued an illegal strategy. First they started to provide services to the citizens of the Netherlands, and only then they began the process of obtaining the necessary license.
The decision of the Central Bank was also influenced by the scale of the activity of the cryptocurrency exchange. They reported that they were forced to give a fine due to the fact that enough people used Coinbase services in the Netherlands.
So far, Coinbase has refrained from commenting on this issue. However, the management has indicated many times that it is ready to cooperate with the regulators of major countries. Coinbase are paying special attention to what they are looking to scale with their massive expansion across the European Union.
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