By PYMNTS | October 16, 2026
A federal judge refused to overturn a $5 million settlement that cryptocurrency exchange Gemini reached with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in January 2025 and has already paid, CoinDesk reported Friday (Oct. 16).
The CFTC has since said that it never should have brought the case against Gemini, and the agency joined the company in seeking to have the settlement overturned, according to the report.
The judge ruled Thursday (Oct. 15) that the CFTC’s decision could not undo the settlement and that Gemini had not been coerced into agreeing to the deal, per the report.
The ruling also means that Gemini must continue to adhere to a court order that prohibits it from misleading the CFTC or publicly rejecting the settlement’s findings, the report said.
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The January 2025 settlement stemmed from a lawsuit the CFTC filed against Gemini in 2023, alleging that the company misled regulators in 2017 during their review of its proposed bitcoin futures contract, according to the report.
Gemini settled before the trial began, and neither admitted nor denied the CFTC’s allegations, per the report.
The settlement was reached during the President Joe Biden administration, before the President Donald Trump administration took office and launched a friendlier approach to the crypto industry, Reuters reported Friday.
In their court filing, Gemini and the CFTC had argued that the regulator should not have accused the company of making false statements and that it had used “inappropriate tactics” to bring its lawsuit, according to the report.
When the CFTC announced its complaint in 2022, the regulator alleged that Gemini had provided information that was determined to be false, including information on whether the bitcoin futures contract would be susceptible to manipulation.
Gemini announced in February that it was cutting its workforce by 25% and exiting the United Kingdom, European Union and Australia while sharpening its focus on prediction markets and the United States.
The company said that its prediction market, Gemini Predictions, had gained more than 10,000 users who had traded over $24 million since its launch two months earlier, in December 2025. Gemini also pointed to the state of the crypto market and the ability of artificial intelligence to make it possible to do more with less.