A supplied report says Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York refused Gemini and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s attempt to unwind Gemini’s January 2025 consent order. The reported ruling means the settlement framework remains in place, and CFTC materials from May 2026 indicate the parties had been trying to remove ongoing prospective provisions rather than recover the already-paid $5 million penalty.

Why the reported denial matters now

The current development is that Judge Hellerstein reportedly denied Gemini and the CFTC’s joint effort to undo the January 2025 consent order. On that account, the court did not accept the argument that the settlement should be unwound after the parties later challenged the fairness of the earlier enforcement approach.

The key context is that the May 2026 motion was narrower than a simple fight over the $5 million figure suggests. CFTC materials from that period described the request as one for relief from judgment aimed at vacating the consent order’s prospective provisions after non-prospective terms had already been satisfied. The same CFTC materials said the $5 million penalty would not be returned to Gemini.

That distinction matters because “voiding” the settlement can sound like a full reset, including repayment. Based on the CFTC’s own description of the motion, the practical dispute was about whether Gemini could be freed from the order’s remaining forward-looking restrictions while leaving the paid civil penalty untouched.

What the original Gemini case was about

The original enforcement case concerned statements and omissions the CFTC said were material to its review of a Bitcoin futures product certification. In a January 2025 release about the consent order, the agency said Gemini had made materially false or misleading statements or omissions to the regulator.

The CFTC’s description identified specific categories: self-trading prevention, fee rebates, trade volume, and liquidity. That makes the case more precise than a generic allegation of misleading conduct. It was tied to information the regulator considered important to judging the integrity of a derivatives product and the market conditions around it.

The timeline is narrower than some shorthand versions imply. The lawsuit itself was filed in 2022, but the supplied materials do not firmly establish that all of the alleged statements were made in 2022, so the clearest supported description is that the 2022 case centered on alleged misstatements connected with a Bitcoin futures product certification process.

How Gemini and the CFTC tried to reopen the order

In May 2026, the CFTC said it joined Gemini in seeking relief from judgment. A CFTC-hosted motion snippet described the filing as relying on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5) and, alternatively, Rule 60(b)(6), which are mechanisms parties can use to ask a court to modify or vacate an existing judgment.

According to those CFTC materials, the agency had concluded that continuing enforcement of the consent order’s prospective provisions no longer served its mission or the public interest. The supplied report says Judge Hellerstein still refused to undo the deal, reasoning that Gemini had voluntarily settled before trial and that regret after obtaining new materials was not enough to reverse that choice.

That leaves the latest status straightforward for readers: the January 2025 consent order reportedly stands, and the reported denial means the parties did not persuade the court to remove the remaining forward-looking parts of that judgment.