SEC Drops Civil Lawsuit Against Gemini Trust Company

TheNewsCryptoPublicado a 2026-01-24Actualizado a 2026-01-24

Resumen

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has dismissed its civil lawsuit against Gemini Trust Company with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be reopened. This decision follows the full repayment of crypto assets to all affected Gemini Earn users through the Genesis Global Capital bankruptcy process between May and June 2024. The SEC cited the complete return of investors' crypto and the resolution of harm as key reasons for dropping the lawsuit. The case originated from a 2020 partnership between Gemini and Genesis, which froze $900 million in user assets during the 2023 market downturn. Gemini contributed significant funds and penalties to help resolve the situation and settle with regulators.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States has officially dismissed its civil lawsuit against Gemini Trust Company. This move indicates a major comfort for the crypto exchange founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

The decision is followed by Gemini Earn users getting all their crypto back, bringing an end to a long legal case that initiated in 2023. As per the filing of 23rd January 2026, the SEC and Gemini Trust Company came together to drop the case with prejudice, which means it can’t be opened in the future.

The Securities and Exchange Commission mentioned that the decision was made using its own judgement, with investor repayment playing a significant role. All Gemini Earn users who were affected got a complete return of their crypto assets. The repayment wasn’t done in cash, and it was completed via the Genesis Global Capital bankruptcy process between May and June 2024.

The SEC further mentioned that after returning users’ crypto completely, the harm to investors was prominently reduced. The regulator also highlighted that Gemini has so far settled associated issues with a lot of state regulators.

The Complete Closure

Amalgamated, these steps backed the decision to completely drop the lawsuit. The case traces back to December 2020, when Gemini collaborated with Genesis, a crypto lending firm associated with Digital Currency Group.

As per this arrangement, Gemini users could lend their crypto to Genesis and get interest payments. Problems initiated when Genesis broke at the time of the wider crypto market downturn.

Withdrawals got frozen, and $900 million in crypto assets were left, associated with around 340,000 users locked and inaccessible. For resolving the situation, Gemini contributed around $40 million in Bitcoin and $10 million in other assets.

It further contributed a $37 million penalty for a different settlement with New York regulators. Gradually, Gemini worked through various legal and regulatory processes at state as well as federal levels, having the complete repayment of users appearing as the prominent milestone in terminating the case.

Highlighted Crypto News Today:

ARK Invest Enters Broader Crypto ETFs With CoinDesk 20

Preguntas relacionadas

QWhy did the SEC dismiss its civil lawsuit against Gemini Trust Company?

AThe SEC dismissed the lawsuit based on its own judgment, citing the complete repayment of crypto assets to Gemini Earn users as a significant factor that reduced investor harm.

QWhat does the dismissal 'with prejudice' mean for the case against Gemini?

AA dismissal 'with prejudice' means the case is permanently closed and cannot be reopened or refiled in the future.

QHow and when were the affected Gemini Earn users repaid their crypto assets?

AThe repayment was completed in-kind (not in cash) through the Genesis Global Capital bankruptcy process between May and June 2024.

QWhat was the initial problem that led to the SEC's lawsuit against Gemini?

AThe lawsuit stemmed from a program where Gemini users lent crypto to Genesis, which then froze withdrawals during a market downturn, locking up $900 million in assets belonging to 340,000 users.

QWhat other significant financial contributions did Gemini make to resolve this situation?

ABeyond facilitating user repayments, Gemini contributed $40 million in Bitcoin, $10 million in other assets, and paid a $37 million penalty in a separate settlement with New York regulators.

Lecturas Relacionadas

Iran’s Crypto Lifeline Hit As US Freezes $344 Million In Funds

The US Treasury has frozen $344 million in cryptocurrency tied to Iranian military and political groups, specifically targeting two Tron blockchain wallets connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hizballah. This action follows reports that Iran was collecting Bitcoin payments from ships for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The freeze occurred just one day after stablecoin issuer Tether locked the same amount of funds at the request of US law enforcement. The move is part of broader US efforts to disrupt Iran's ability to generate and move funds, highlighting the limitations of using cryptocurrency as a sanctions workaround when centralized issuers comply with enforcement actions.

bitcoinistHace 17 min(s)

Iran’s Crypto Lifeline Hit As US Freezes $344 Million In Funds

bitcoinistHace 17 min(s)

Amidst the Volatility in the Crypto Market, Who is Buying Against the Trend?

"In a volatile crypto market downturn of Q1 2026, institutional players demonstrated divergent strategies. While Bitcoin fell over 25% and Ethereum dropped 35%, key institutions accumulated: corporate treasuries like Strategy (MicroStrategy) added over $10 billion in BTC, sovereign wealth funds like Mubadala increased IBIT holdings by 46%, and major banks launched crypto services and ETFs. Notably, 26 new crypto ETFs were filed or launched under streamlined SEC rules, including bank-led products from Morgan Stanley and BlackRock’s staking ETH ETF. VC funding saw concentration: total investment reached ~$5 billion, but deal count plummeted 49%. Three mega-deals—BVNK ($1.8B), Kalshi ($1B), and Polymarket ($600M)—accounted for half the quarter’s funding. Investment shifted from DeFi/NFTs to payments, prediction markets, and regulated CeFi infrastructure. Selling pressure came from hedge funds (e.g., Brevan Howard cut IBIT by 85%) and Bitcoin miners liquidating holdings. The U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve saw zero additions, highlighting that real buying came from corporations and sovereign funds, not governments. The institutional crypto landscape is bifurcating: long-term holders accumulate while short-term traders exit, signaling a foundation for the next cycle."

marsbitHace 40 min(s)

Amidst the Volatility in the Crypto Market, Who is Buying Against the Trend?

marsbitHace 40 min(s)

Hands-on with Hunyuan Hy3 Preview: Tencent's AI, Finally Competitive?

Tencent's Hunyuan AI team has released its latest language model, Hy3 preview, marking a significant step forward for the company's AI capabilities. With 295B total parameters and support for 256K context length, the model employs a mixture-of-experts architecture. It shows improvements in complex logic, instruction following, contextual learning, code generation, and agent task execution. In testing, Hy3 preview demonstrated strong performance in multi-step logical reasoning but showed occasional instability in identifying traps in trick questions. It performed well in extracting key information from disordered meeting transcripts and accurately followed new linguistic rules. As an AI agent, it successfully built functional applications like a Snake game and generated data analysis dashboards, though it sometimes fell short in fully completing complex open-ended tasks. In natural language use, it produced coherent and stylistically appropriate narratives with reduced “AI-like” tone. Priced competitively, Hy3 preview is already integrated into Tencent’s key products, including Tencent Cloud and WorkBuddy. While not leading in every benchmark, it represents a solid, practical model that signals Tencent’s renewed momentum in AI development.

marsbitHace 3 hora(s)

Hands-on with Hunyuan Hy3 Preview: Tencent's AI, Finally Competitive?

marsbitHace 3 hora(s)

From Theft to Re-entry: How Was $292 Million "Laundered"?

A sophisticated crypto laundering operation was executed following the $292 million hack of Kelp DAO on April 18. The attack, attributed to the North Korean Lazarus group, began with anonymous infrastructure preparation using Tornado Cash to fund wallets untraceably. The hacker exploited a vulnerability in Kelp’s cross-chain bridge, stealing 116,500 rsETH. To avoid crashing the market, the attacker used Aave and Compound as laundering tools—depositing the stolen rsETH as collateral to borrow $190 million in clean, liquid ETH. This move triggered a bank run on Aave, causing an $8 billion drop in TVL. After consolidating funds, the attacker fragmented them across hundreds of wallets to evade detection. A major breakpoint was THORChain, where over $460 million in volume—30 times its usual activity—was processed in 24 hours, converting ETH into Bitcoin. This shift to Bitcoin’s UTXO model exponentially increased tracing complexity by shattering funds into countless untraceable fragments. The final destination was Tron-based USDT, the primary channel for illicit crypto flows. From there, funds were cashed out via OTC brokers in China and Southeast Asia, using unlicensed underground banks and UnionPay networks outside Western sanctions scope. Ultimately, the laundered money supports North Korea’s weapons programs, which rely heavily on crypto hacking for foreign currency. The incident underscores structural challenges in DeFi: its openness, composability, and lack of central control make such laundering not just possible, but inherently difficult to prevent.

marsbitHace 3 hora(s)

From Theft to Re-entry: How Was $292 Million "Laundered"?

marsbitHace 3 hora(s)

Behind DeepSeek V4's Stunning Debut: Silicon Valley Is 'Building Walls,' China Is 'Paving Roads'

China's AI landscape is witnessing a strategic divergence from Silicon Valley’s closed-source competition to a collaborative open-source ecosystem. On April 24, DeepSeek released V4, a top-ranked open-source model on Hugging Face, featuring breakthroughs like million-token context length with minimal KV cache and native support for domestic chips like Huawei’s Ascend. Similarly, Kimi’s K2.6, released days earlier, also adopted open-source principles. Unlike U.S. giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic—locked in revenue disputes and tactical product clashes—Chinese firms embrace shared innovation. DeepSeek and Kimi openly build on each other’s advances, like the MLA architecture and Muon optimizer, avoiding redundant R&D and driving down costs. DeepSeek V4 focused on pushing base model capabilities, while Kimi specialized in Agent-based applications. Although U.S. firms lead in revenue and valuation, China’s open-source models achieve comparable performance at a fraction of the cost (e.g., DeepSeek V3 trained for $5.58M vs. GPT-5’s $500M+). With token usage growing exponentially, China’s collaborative model promises scalable, affordable AI built on domestic hardware, shaping a more accessible path to AGI.

marsbitHace 3 hora(s)

Behind DeepSeek V4's Stunning Debut: Silicon Valley Is 'Building Walls,' China Is 'Paving Roads'

marsbitHace 3 hora(s)

Trading

Spot

Futuros