CFTC Wants to Drop Gemini’s $5M Settlement. A Judge Just Said No

In brief

• A federal judge denied a rare joint motion from Gemini and the CFTC to vacate the $5 million settlement the exchange agreed to in January 2025.
• The ruling keeps a permanent injunction barring Gemini from making false statements to the CFTC; the exchange already paid the $5 million, which won’t be refunded.
• It’s a rare case of a court holding firm as a regulator retreats from its own case, amid the CFTC’s broader pro-crypto shift.

A federal judge has refused to let the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini walk back a $5 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, even though the regulator itself had joined the exchange in asking him to toss it out.

In a ruling issued Oct. 15, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York denied the unusual joint motion to vacate a consent order Gemini agreed to in January 2025.

He found that neither a shift in the CFTC’s enforcement priorities under the current administration nor allegations of misconduct inside the agency’s enforcement division met the legal bar to reopen a signed judgment.

“Neither of these two grounds is sufficient to support vacating the settlement,” Hellerstein wrote, noting that Gemini voluntarily signed the deal roughly three weeks before trial.