The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission wants to undo one of its own enforcement wins. On May 27, the CFTC and Gemini Trust Company jointly filed a motion in the Southern District of New York to vacate a $5 million civil penalty and permanent injunction that Gemini agreed to pay just months ago, in January 2025.
The agency’s reasoning is blunt: the original accusations were based on non-credible whistleblower information, and the CFTC “should never have accused Gemini of making false statements.”
What the original case was about
The complaint traces back to mid-2022, when the CFTC accused Gemini of making misleading statements during its 2017 self-certification of bitcoin futures on the Cboe Futures Exchange. Self-certification is the process through which exchanges verify that new products comply with existing regulations. The allegations claimed that Gemini failed to provide complete information on loans or rebates that could affect the futures contract’s perceived susceptibility to market manipulation.
Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, denied wrongdoing but settled the case in January 2025 rather than go to trial. The terms included a $5 million civil monetary penalty and a permanent injunction barring the company from making false or misleading statements to the CFTC.
