Federal regulators have dropped a long-running lawsuit against a prominent cryptocurrency firm with ties to President Trump, court records show, the Trump administration’s latest pullback in enforcement of the industry.
In a filing made public on Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to dismiss the case against Gemini Trust, a crypto exchange founded and run by billionaire twins, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
The twins, who are among the president’s closest allies in the crypto industry, donated to a fund-raising committee that backed Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and other Republican organizations. They also contributed to the construction of the new White House ballroom; were founding members of an exclusive club partly owned by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son; and backed a crypto firm co-founded by Eric Trump, the president’s second son.
The case stemmed from the implosion, in 2022, of a crypto investment product that Gemini offered its customers, some of whom lost access to their money for 18 months. They eventually recovered their investment, a development that the S.E.C. cited in its decision to drop the case against Gemini. The investors were made whole after a regulatory action brought by the New York Attorney General’s office.
A spokesman for the agency declined to comment on Friday, referring to the joint agreement to dismiss. Gemini did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dissolution of the case — at the time one of the S.E.C.’s highest-profile actions against the industry — reflected a broader retreat from crypto enforcement under Mr. Trump, who is himself a crypto mogul.
Last month, The New York Times published an investigation into the S.E.C.’s backtracking from crypto cases, finding that the agency had eased up on more than 60 percent of the crypto lawsuits that were pending when Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. The agency paused some of its crypto cases, lessened penalties in others and outright dismissed several of the lawsuits.
Gemini is the eighth crypto firm to have its lawsuit dismissed since Mr. Trump started his second term.
Crypto firms with ties to Mr. Trump have fared well. The S.E.C. is no longer actively pursuing any cases against firms with known Trump ties, The Times found. The agency backtracked in investigating every firm that has relationships with the Trump family’s crypto businesses or has donated to Mr. Trump’s political causes. The agency’s only remaining crypto cases are against little-known defendants without clear ties to Mr. Trump, The Times found in a data analysis.
In a statement last month, the S.E.C. said that political favoritism “had nothing to do with” how it handled crypto enforcement, and that the agency was pivoting for legal and policy reasons, including concerns about its authority to police the industry. The S.E.C. said that the agency’s current Republican commissioners fundamentally disagreed with filing most crypto cases long before Mr. Trump embraced the industry, and that it “takes securities fraud and investor protection seriously.”
There is no indication that the president pressured the agency to go easy on specific crypto firms. And The Times did not find evidence that the firms had sought to influence the cases against them through contributions or business ties to Mr. Trump.
During the Biden administration, the S.E.C. sued Gemini and its partner at the time, Genesis Global Capital, in January 2023, saying that hundreds of thousands of customers were left in the lurch when the crypto program collapsed. New York state also sued both companies.
Under the program, called “Gemini Earn,” customers lent their digital assets to Genesis in return for interest. Gemini, which acted as an intermediary, took a cut of the transactions. Customers had to create accounts with Gemini Trust to participate in the program.
The customers were allowed to withdraw their funds at any time. But the program fell apart when bad loans by Genesis drove the firm into bankruptcy proceedings. The customers’ accounts totaling nearly $1 billion in assets were frozen.
Genesis reached a $2 billion settlement with New York in May 2024. and customers eventually got their money back from the firm. Gemini struck its own deal with the state to pay up to $50 million, if needed, to cover remaining losses.
Gemini acknowledged no wrongdoing and blamed Genesis for the debacle.
In early 2024, Genesis settled with the S.E.C., agreeing to pay a $21 million penalty. “The collapse of the Gemini Earn program underscores the unknown risks that investors are exposed to when market participants fail to comply with the federal securities laws,” Gurbir S. Grewal, who then headed the agency’s enforcement division, said in announcing the settlement.
But Gemini continued to fight the case. On social media, Tyler Winklevoss called the lawsuit a “manufactured parking ticket.”
In April, the S.E.C. moved to freeze the case to negotiate a resolution. The agency disclosed in September that it had struck a deal with Gemini that had to be approved by a vote of the S.E.C. commissioners.
Andrea Fuller and Seamus Hughes contributed reporting.
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, covering President Trump.
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