CFTC Moves to Clear Gemini’s Record, Says 2022 Complaint ‘Should Not Have Been Filed’

The CFTC is moving to vacate its own consent order against Gemini, admitting the 2022 lawsuit never should have been filed, and closing the chapter on an enforcement saga that took down a presidential nomination along the way. The CFTC filed a joint motion with Gemini Trust Company on May 27 to vacate the consent order stemming from CFTC v. Gemini Trust Company LLC, the same enforcement action the agency now concedes should not have been brought. The motion caps off a years-long regulatory saga between the CFTC and the cryptocurrency exchange owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, which also impacted the eventual CFTC chair appointment. The CFTC filed the original 2022 complaint against Gemini “for making false or misleading statements of material facts or omitting to state material facts to the CFTC in connection with the self-certification of a bitcoin futures product” in 2017. The case ran for nearly three years. The January 2025 consent order required Gemini to pay a $5 million civil monetary penalty and submit to a permanent injunction, a settlement which Gemini agreed to without admitting fault and consistently attributed to a false whistleblower. According to Wednesday’s press release, after a comprehensive review, “the CFTC concluded the complaint should not have been filed — and would not have been under current enforcement standards.” The original complaint and CFTC’s about-face The original CFTC complaint dates back to 2017. Gemini was working with a Chicago futures exchange to list one of the first bitcoin futures contracts in the U.S., a product that would settle based on prices from Gemini’s daily bitcoin auction. The CFTC needed to assess whether that auction was manipulation-resistant before approving the product. Its 2022 complaint alleged Gemini’s answers to that question were false or misleading. The allegations were that Gemini overstated how expensive and controlled the auction was, understating how thin its liquidity ran, and failing to disclose fee rebates that reduced participants’ real cost of entry. The January 2025 consent order required Gemini to pay a $5 million civil monetary penalty and submit to a permanent injunction, which Gemini agreed to without admitting the underlying facts. The same agency, under new leadership and a different administration, is asking a court to wipe what’s left of that order. The CFTC noted that the case was built largely on a whistleblower account the agency knew was unreliable and called Gemini a “fraud victim.” It also determined that the agency’s own process was compromised throughout the suit and settlement. Because the $5 million penalty has already been paid, the CFTC and Gemini are now jointly asking the court “to vacate the consent order as to the prospective provision” including the permanent injunction, on the grounds that enforcing it going forward “serves neither the CFTC’s mission nor the public interest” and “would not be equitable.” The nomination fight intersected with Gemini case The Gemini enforcement case intersected with the selection of the new CFTC chair in 2025. In July 2025, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss reportedly urged President Trump to reconsider his pick of Brian Quintenz, a former CFTC commissioner and Andreessen Horowitz crypto policy chief, for CFTC chair, arguing he was out of step with the president’s crypto agenda. Five days later, a Politico report surfaced alleging the twins had contacted Trump directly that weekend to press the case. When Quintenz released private messages from the brothers, he suggested their real objection was that he wouldn’t commit to a public position on the CFTC’s enforcement action against Gemini. The White House pulled his nomination on September 30, 2025. Trump nominated Michael Selig the following month, and the Senate confirmed him on December 18, 2025. It is Selig whom Trump singled out by name in a May 26 Truth Social post, calling the CFTC’s exclusive authority over prediction markets “critically important.” Gemini’s new stack includes prediction markets The enforcement unwinding runs parallel to Gemini’s expansion into prediction markets. In April 2026, the exchange announced that affiliate Gemini Olympus received a DCO license from the CFTC, allowing it to act as a clearinghouse for regulated derivatives trading, including prediction markets. That followed the December 2025 designation of Gemini Titan as a Designated Contract Market, which launched its predictions marketplace the same month. With both licenses in hand, Gemini now controls the full trading stack including execution, clearing, and settlement. That positions Gemini as a direct competitor to prediction market exchanges Kalshi and Polymarket. Donald Trump Jr. serves as a paid strategic advisor to Kalshi and sits on Polymarket’s advisory board, with his firm 1789 Capital holding a financial stake in Polymarket. For the Winklevosses, an eight-year enforcement cloud is lifting as direct political lobbying efforts appear to be paying off early on in the new chair’s tenure.