Q1 2025 in US crypto enforcement: BitMEX fined $100 million as Garantex is shut down

US agencies announced 49 distinct crypto enforcement actions in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Bitminer.io enforcement ledger, the same number as in the first quarter of 2024. The Justice Department brought 31, the SEC 11, the CFTC 5 and OFAC 2. The quarter’s 7 prison sentences had a median of 87 months.

BitMEX and Garantex

On January 15, the crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX was sentenced to a $100 million fine for willfully failing to run an adequate anti-money laundering and know-your-customer program. In March, the Justice Department and its partners took down the Garantex exchange, froze over $26 million and charged two of its operators.

Genesis

On January 17, the SEC announced that Digital Currency Group and the former chief executive of its lending arm, Genesis Global Capital, would pay a combined $38.5 million to settle charges that they misled investors about Genesis’s finances after the hedge fund Three Arrows Capital defaulted in June 2022.

Hacks in court

In February, prosecutors charged a 22-year-old Canadian with exploiting the KyberSwap and Indexed Finance DeFi protocols between 2021 and 2023, taking about $65 million in all. They alleged he then tried to extort KyberSwap’s victims, demanding control of the protocol in return for half the money. The failures ledger records KyberSwap Elastic’s loss at $48 million in November 2023.

The same month, an Indiana man was sentenced to 20 years for a 2022 cyber intrusion at an investment firm in South Dakota that stole crypto from hundreds of clients. He was ordered to repay no less than $37 million.

In late February, a Brazilian man was extradited from Switzerland to face charges over Trade Coin Club, which prosecutors called a bitcoin Ponzi scheme.

Sources

By The Assayer, the Bitminer.io house byline. Written by AI from the sources above and checked automatically. No person reviewed it before publication. How we work.