{"id":10560,"date":"2025-09-12T12:03:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/coinbase-takes-legal-action-accusing-sec-of-erasing-a-years-worth-of-gensler-texts\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T12:03:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:03:20","slug":"coinbase-takes-legal-action-accusing-sec-of-erasing-a-years-worth-of-gensler-texts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/coinbase-takes-legal-action-accusing-sec-of-erasing-a-years-worth-of-gensler-texts\/","title":{"rendered":"Coinbase takes legal action, accusing SEC of erasing a \u2018year\u2019s worth\u2019 of Gensler texts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-detail__content blocks\">\n<p class=\"is-style-lead\">Coinbase cites a report from the Inspector General as proof that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission erased a year\u2019s worth of text messages from former Chairman Gary Gensler. Even though, the firm claims the texts were supposed to be preserved.<\/p>\n<div id=\"cn-block-summary-block_337b0ae4a3288996df86a29845a5b2f3\" class=\"cn-block-summary\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__nav tabs\">\n        <span class=\"tabs__item is-selected\">Summary<\/span>\n    <\/div>\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__content\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Coinbase accused the SEC of violating public trust by erasing text messages sent and received by former Chair Gary Gensler from October 2022 to September 2023.<\/li>\n<li>Text messages from more than 20 other high-ranking SEC officials have also reportedly been erased by the federal agency\u2019s IT team in a widespread factory-reset.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .cn-block-summary --><\/p>\n<p>In a recent post, the firm\u2019s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, accused the federal agency under the previous chairman of violating public trust by deleting the documents. According to Grewal, the SEC destroyed \u201cdocuments they were required to preserve and produce.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/assets.ctfassets.net\/sygt3q11s4a9\/2gMJqYYxjrajLXf2vPtGL\/28f726593a4821929a2943aac72f547f\/37.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">documents<\/a> include text messages that were sent and received by then-SEC Chairman Gary Gensler from October 2022 to September 2023. According to the Inspector General\u2019s office, these text messages were \u201cdestroyed\u201d when the agency\u2019s IT staff \u201cperformed a factory reset of the smartphone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Gensler SEC did this even though we asked for information about \u201call communications\u201d within the SEC related to crypto regulatory and enforcement decision-making years ago,\u201d wrote Grewal in his latest <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/iampaulgrewal\/status\/1966193457120293019\">post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Gensler SEC destroyed documents they were required to preserve and produce. We now have proof from the SEC\u2019s own Inspector General. Today we ask the federal court to address this gross violation of public trust to ensure that it never happens again. 1\/3 <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DPLtHUiolj\">pic.twitter.com\/DPLtHUiolj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/iampaulgrewal\/status\/1966193455165837682?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">September 11, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p>\n<p>Gensler isn\u2019t the only one. In fact, Coinbase\u2019s court order alleged that the same can has happened with more than 20 other high-ranking SEC officials\u2019 texts may have also been erased upon the factory-reset carried out by the IT team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough the SEC has known of these glaring and urgent problems for two years, none of this was disclosed to this Court or History Associates,\u201d wrote Coinbase in the court order to the District of California.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, Coinbase is asking the Inspector General to do an \u201cexpedited discovery\u201d to recover all the responsive texts. They are also demanding that the SEC face sanctions for deleting the texts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not surprising that the same agency that fined firms billions for record-keeping failures committed the exact same violations,\u201d said Grewal.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Coinbase\u2019s FOIA request to the SEC<\/h2>\n<p>Coinbase\u2019s court order about the missing texts is part of the firm\u2019s earlier request through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Back in April 2025, Coinbase was able to obtain internal documents from the U.S. SEC. <\/p>\n<p>Most of these documents are related to the federal agency\u2019s probe into Ethereum (ETH) 2.0; such as May 2022 internal analysis of ETH 2.0 under the Howey test, a February 2023 email questioning Ethereum\u2019s security, and an April 2023 memorandum prepared for commissioners before authorizing the ETH 2.0 investigation.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Grewal criticized the SEC\u2019s inconsistent treatment of crypto assets, questioning why Ethereum passed the agency\u2019s internal \u201cecosystem\u201d test while others did not.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coinbase cites a report from the Inspector General as proof that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission erased a year\u2019s worth of text messages from former Chairman Gary Gensler. Even&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10561,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10560\/revisions\/10561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}