Platforms, funds and founders in the cryptocurrency sector hit by a legal or regulatory action with an identifiable outcome: criminal convictions of executives, fines and settlements with regulators, fraudulent bankruptcies and operating bans. The focus is on the actual outcome —years of prison actually served, fine amount, settlement status— rather than the size of the scandal or the promise of a financial revolution. The tracker covers both the major convicted founders (FTX, Celsius, Terra, Binance) and sanctions by regulators such as the SEC, the CFTC or European and Asian authorities. The technology itself is not judged: the legal fact is documented with its source, distinguishing the final, served conviction from the announcement or the indictment.
Statistical readings derived from the attributes of each recorded case. All figures come from the documented events; amounts are computed only over cases with a sum expressed in the indicated currency, without converting between currencies.
Choropleth by number of forensically or judicially documented cases. Countries with no verifiable public cases remain in the base colour — the absence of events does not equal the absence of surveillance. Hover or click a coloured country to see the cases.
The sector that promised a financial system with no intermediaries or authorities ended up in the courts: the founders of FTX, Celsius and Terra add up to decades in prison, while fines on platforms break records —Terraform's SEC settlement alone reached 4.5 billion dollars—.
Cryptocurrency was born with a political promise: money with no central banks, no intermediaries and, above all, no authorities able to step in. A decade and a half later, this tracker documents the sector's reunion with the State, and it is not friendly. It gathers the cases in which a crypto platform, fund or founder ended up hit by a legal action with an identifiable outcome: criminal conviction, regulatory fine, settlement or fraudulent bankruptcy.
The dominant story is that of 2022-2024: the chain collapse that took down the sector's largest platforms. Terra/Luna evaporated first, wiping out around 40 billion dollars and dragging down Celsius and others. Then FTX fell, the world's second-largest exchange, in what turned out to be a brazen fraud on customer funds. The judicial hangover came afterwards, and that is what is measured here.
Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX) is serving 25 years; Alex Mashinsky (Celsius), 12; Do Kwon (Terra) pleaded guilty in 2025. Combined, the sentences of the major crypto founders exceed half a century in prison. The dream of money without authorities ended with its leading evangelists before a federal judge.
The tracker reveals a telling asymmetry between how individuals and companies are punished. Founders who directly defrauded their customers —Bankman-Fried, Mashinsky, Kwon— faced the criminal stick, with sentences of one to two decades. Platforms that survived but broke the rules faced the monetary stick: settlements and fines that may be enormous in absolute terms but, for a company that size, are a cost of doing business.
Binance's case illustrates it perfectly. The company paid 4.3 billion dollars to the US Department of Justice and Treasury —one of the largest corporate settlements in history— for failures in its anti-money-laundering programme. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, served only four months in jail. The gap between that multi-billion fine and those four months sums up how the system treats very differently direct fraud against the customer and the regulatory non-compliance of a platform still standing.
In the United States, the SEC was the sector's scourge: 2024 became the most-penalised year in its history, with more than 4.6 billion dollars in fines, driven by the record 4.5-billion settlement with Terraform Labs. But the sector also fought back and gained ground: in the Ripple case, a court cut the fine from the nearly 2 billion the SEC sought to 125 million, after concluding the XRP token was not a security in all scenarios. Crypto regulation is not a triumphant march of the State; it is a contested field, as the still-open cases against Coinbase, Kraken and others show.
Outside the United States, the pattern is different and more administrative. European regulators —the Central Bank of Ireland with €21.5 million against Coinbase Europe for AML failures, the Dutch central bank with fines on Binance and Crypto.com for operating without registration, French prosecutors investigating Binance— act mostly through the compliance route: licences, registration and money-laundering prevention. They target not so much the fraudster as the platform operating without permission.
Terraform Labs agreed in 2024 to pay more than 4.47 billion dollars to settle the SEC's lawsuit, which accused it of defrauding crypto investors during the 2022 Terra/Luna implosion. It was the SEC's largest enforcement action against a crypto company to date, and made 2024 the most-penalised year in the sector, with more than 4.68 billion in fines that year alone.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison by a New York federal court, after being found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for illegally using billions of dollars of FTX depositors' money. The judge also ordered the forfeiture of more than 11 billion dollars. FTX, once one of the world's largest exchanges and advertised at the Super Bowl, collapsed in November 2022. Prosecutors had sought up to 50 years; the defence, six and a half.
A federal court determined in August 2024 that Ripple Labs must pay 125 million dollars for violating securities law in the sale of its XRP token to institutional clients. The figure was far below the nearly 2 billion the SEC had sought. The case is significant because an earlier ruling had concluded that XRP was not a security in all scenarios, a nuance the crypto sector considered a partial victory against the regulator.
The founder and CEO of crypto lending platform Celsius Network, Alex Mashinsky, was sentenced in May 2025 to 12 years in prison, after pleading guilty to fraud. The SEC and CFTC had accused Celsius and Mashinsky of orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar fraudulent scheme before the platform's 2022 bankruptcy, which trapped the funds of hundreds of thousands of users.
Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, responsible for the 2022 collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and the Luna token —which wiped out around 40 billion dollars in value and precipitated a crypto winter—, pleaded guilty and faced sentencing in December 2025 before a New York court, after being extradited. As part of the deal, he was to forfeit 19.3 million dollars and some of his properties. His defence asked to limit the sentence to five years, arguing he acted out of 'hubris and desperation', not greed.
The founder of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, Changpeng Zhao, was sentenced in April 2024 to four months in prison for failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme. The company had agreed in November 2023 to pay 4.3 billion dollars to the US Department of Justice and Treasury to settle the accusations, one of the largest corporate settlements in history. The contrast between the founder's brief jail term and the company's huge fine is notable.
The Dutch Central Bank fined the platform Crypto.com €2.85 million, in a sanction imposed in October 2023 and published in March 2024, for offering virtual-asset services in the country without the registration required by anti-money-laundering laws. The regulator noted the company had enjoyed a competitive advantage by avoiding supervisory costs.
The Dutch Central Bank (DNB) fined Binance, the world's largest exchange, €3.3 million in April 2022 for offering crypto services in the country without the mandatory registration under anti-money-laundering laws. The fine, among the most severe of its category, was reduced by 5% for the company's relative transparency. Binance ended up leaving the Dutch market in 2023 after failing to register.
The Central Bank of Ireland fined Coinbase Europe €21.46 million in November 2025 for serious breaches of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing obligations. Failures in the configuration of its monitoring system left more than 30 million transactions, worth over €176 billion, inadequately monitored over twelve months. It was the Irish regulator's first major public action against a crypto-services provider.
French financial prosecutors opened an investigation into Binance's French branch for alleged illegal operation as a digital-asset provider and 'aggravated money laundering', as revealed by Le Monde in June 2023. The case, referred to the SEJF agency, had been ongoing for more than a year. Binance said it complied with all French laws. It illustrates the European regulatory pressure on the world's largest exchange beyond final fines.
The tracker records crypto-sector actors (platforms, funds, founders or executives) with a criminal or regulatory action that has an identifiable outcome or procedural status and a verifiable source. It documents the type of action (criminal conviction, regulatory fine, settlement, bankruptcy, ban), the amount in its original currency, the status (final, appealed, ongoing, settlement) and the form of compliance where applicable. Amounts are not converted between currencies. The legitimacy of the technology or business model is not assessed; the legal fact is documented. The decisive field is the outcome: the difference between a served conviction, a monetary settlement and an open case.