SEC drops lawsuit against Winklevoss twins’ Gemini crypto exchange

In Brief

The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its lawsuit against Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

The Winklevoss twins were donors to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and also backed his family’s business ventures.

In a joint filing on Friday, the SEC and Gemini asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, which centered on the collapse of an investment product called Gemini Earn, with some investors losing access to their money for 18 months.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Gemini in 2023 and accused the company of defrauding investors. To justify dismissing the SEC’s case, the new filing points to a 2024 settlement between New York and Gemini, with investors ultimately receiving “one hundred percent of the crypto assets they had loaned […] through the Gemini Earn program.”

This appears to be a larger pattern of leniency from the Trump administration towards the crypto industry. The New York Times previously reported that the SEC has either dismissed, paused, or reduced penalties in more than 60 percent of the crypto lawsuits pending when Trump took office last year. 

Gemini has also filed to go public.

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