The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reached a settlement in a Freedom of Information Act case connected to Coinbase, ending litigation over records tied to SEC investigations involving Ethereum and the missing text messages of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

According to a joint statement filed with the court on July 22, the SEC agreed to pay plaintiff History Associates Inc. $150,000 and to release relevant documents that had not previously been disclosed. After reaching the settlement, the parties asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the case.

History Associates, a company that provides historical research, writing, and archival services to public institutions, filed the lawsuit on Coinbase’s behalf in June 2024. A year earlier, the company had submitted three separate public records requests to the SEC. FOIA allows members of the public to seek federal agency records, and disputes over withheld or delayed records can be challenged in federal court.

Those requests sought documents related to the SEC’s investigations into Zachary Coburn and Enigma MPC, as well as internal agency records connected to Ethereum’s transition from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake system. Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake, completed in 2022, has remained a point of interest for crypto companies and regulators because it affected how the network validates transactions and how market participants assess its regulatory treatment.

The legal proceedings led the SEC to produce thousands of documents. The court also ruled that the agency should prioritize records and correspondence that Gary Gensler sent, received, or reviewed concerning Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake.

The document production process was disrupted after the SEC Inspector General announced in September 2025 that Gensler’s text messages from October 2022 to September 2023 had been accidentally deleted.

Later court records showed that the SEC had erased 21 phones assigned to senior officials. Five of those devices reportedly belonged to personnel whose records had been requested in the Coinbase-related case. The SEC reportedly notified the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration about the erased devices in July 2025, a step tied to federal recordkeeping obligations when agency records may be lost or destroyed.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong connected the development to allegations that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation concealed certain evidence during the 2023 banking crisis.

In a statement on X, Armstrong said, “The SEC under Gensler deleted messages at the height of the anti-crypto campaign, and the FDIC concealed evidence. All of this came to light after we fought to uncover the truth.”