The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission agreed on July 22 to settle a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by History Associates Inc. on behalf of Coinbase, agreeing to pay $150,000 and produce remaining documents related to its investigation of Ethereum.

The lawsuit was filed in June 2024 after the SEC did not fully respond to three record requests submitted in 2023 seeking documents about SEC investigations into Zachary Coburn and Enigma MPC and about Ethereum’s transition to proof‑of‑stake.

The case forced the SEC to turn over thousands of documents and highlighted the deletion of text messages and data from the phones of senior officials, including former chair Gary Gensler, after an internal review in September 2025 found that the agency had inadvertently erased Gensler’s messages from October 2022 to September 2023 and wiped 21 phones belonging to top staff, five of which belonged to individuals named in the suit. The SEC notified the National Archives of the deletions in July 2025.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the settlement represents a win for transparency, linking it to a separate FDIC investigation into evidence handling during the 2023 banking crisis. He posted on X that the SEC had deleted texts during an anti‑crypto campaign and that the evidence was uncovered after Coinbase’s legal efforts.

The dismissal will be finalized once the SEC completes production of the remaining records, ending more than two years of litigation over the document requests.